Anne Rice examines her life and beliefs

   Anne Rice, author of the best-seller "Interview with a Vampire" and the books it spawned, has a new career, or at least a new direction. After years of writing blockbuster horror novels, lately she has turned her focus to the life of Jesus. Rice vows that she will write about religion and faith exclusively henceforth.
   It would seem to be a sharp turn, from crafting characters that many would consider dark and damned, "shut out of life," as she describes them, to attempting to re-create a historical figure regarded by millions as the Son of God or God Incarnate and the founder of Christianity, one of the world’s major religions. Christianity in its purest form affirms and celebrates life, not lusts to destroy it.
   But Rice says that shifting from writing about vampires to writing about religion is a natural progression. In "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" (2008, Alfred A. Knopf), she writes that the Vampire stories reflect her inner struggle after she turned away from her Roman Catholic faith while a college student and became an atheist. In the next 38 years and 21 books, she was searching for the way back to belief in God, she says, albeit unconsciously.
   "Called Out of Darkness" is Rice’s account of her loss of faith and the decades-long journey to reconversion and return to the Roman Catholic Church. Rice is a strong believer in traditional Catholicism, but her latest book is also a defense of Christianity in general, in the face of modern society’s onslaught. The book is a fascinating look inside the head and heart of a famous writer wrestling with age-old questions of belief.
   Although the vampire books brought Rice fame and vast fortune, she also has suffered great losses besides the loss of faith — her mother died when Rice was 14, she lost a little daughter to deadly illness, and her husband — the love of her life — died in 2002 after 41 years of marriage. In spite of those blows, she has remained positive, richly creative and, as this book proves, thought provoking.