Fun Summer Read

Can you imagine a murder mystery in which the Women’s Ordination Conference has a major role in the plot? Marjorie Jones did!

In the Convent: A Frances Yeats Mystery is set in Mexico City, in and around the very convent where Sor Juana de la Cruz lived in the 17^th century. These nuns are definitely very 20^th-21^st century, however, and are a delightful collection of modern women religious.

This might be due to Marjorie’s years on the history faculty at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, NY. In fact, Judy Heffernan and I met Marjorie when she was Theresa Kane’s companion and chauffeur to a Federation of Christian Ministries meeting in Boston. Since then, we’ve all become friends, as Marjorie and Jonathan Jones relocated to Philadelphia. Is it telling too much to say that Jonathan’s first demonstration was a Southeastern Pennsylvania WOC’s Eucharistic liturgy on Ordination Day?

Mostly they can’t join us that day because in normal years it’s also the graduation day for the students in Villanova’s program at SCI Phoenix, which replaced Graterford as the state’s maximum-security prison. Before her time served in Pennsylvania, Marjorie was teaching at Sing Sing in New York in a program for Mercy. As a Viet Nam Navy veteran, Jonathan has also formed bonds with service member inmates. This is such valuable work that I wonder how Marjorie can get away to write, but she does.

This is Jones’s second mystery; both draw on her 2008 biography, Frances Yates and the Hermetic Tradition. A quick summary in In the Convent is “mysticism, Gnosticism, and magic.” Yates the historian found remote strands of each in her study of the Renaissance and wove them into an appealing universalistic philosophy. You can pick that much up from the novel, and you might be tempted to pursue Tarot in the previous one, In the Cards.

Does it surprise you that Yates and the other investigators find similar trends in Mexican religious expression, especially but not exclusively in the Convent of San Jeronimo? And that certain church members find beliefs such as a woman deity problematic? Many allusions are made to the Inquisition’s execution of the author Yates identified as key to the Hermetic tradition, Giordano Bruno – which sets up the plot. You won’t lose sleep over this gentle mystery, but you will find the forces at work familiar.

But that’s not the only fun in the book. Much will remind you of WOC and RCWP. If you’ve ever glanced at Barbara Walker’s The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, you’ll have a secret smile. If you’ve traveled to Mexico City, Cuernavaca, or Chichen Itza, you’ll relive experiences. If great art helps put things in context, there are good b&w reproductions. If you love Mexican food, you’ll be delighted by the descriptions of meals that would photographed today. If you’ve been fascinated by Sor Juana, there’s enough to suggest how much more there is to explore.

And I, at least, have the distinct pleasure of knowing that two characters dress like Marjorie and Jonathan.  The wife in that couple had Ruth Bader Ginsburg in law school, just like Marjorie. I wonder whether the handsome Juan Carlos is based on a mutual acquaintance, and I would especially like to know who the chain-smoking Frances Yates resembles. Certainly no one in WOC’s circles, but maybe someone in the Writing Women’s Lives seminar in New York City. Or maybe just Frances Yates herself.

Treat yourself this summer! In the Convent is available from Dorrance Publishing Co. in paper or ebook.