Joanne Harris burst onto the literary scene with her novel Chocolat, which became a feature film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. In Holy Fools, Harris again presents us with a woman hiding from her past -- Soeur August, resident of the Abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer. And again, Harris deftly explores how, depending on who's at the pulpit, religion can be manipulated to achieve either justice or injustice.
Soeur August was once the famed "Winged One," performing with theater troupes as an aerial acrobat who seemed to defy death. But what she couldn't defy was her passion for Guy LeMerle, the con artist magician who taught her that love and religion can make anyone a fool.
When LeMerle appears at the abbey years later disguised as a priest accompanying the new abbess, Soeur August proves to be a worthy adversary of her former lover, who seeks to use the abbey as a pawn in his own private game of revenge. LeMerle also has no qualms about using Soeur August's child, which he knows to be his, as the key to getting the cooperation he needs from his former lover.
Harris has excelled at providing not only a story of lovers destined to meet time and time again in emotional and psychological battle, but at immersing her readers in a world they will be disappointed to leave when they reach the last page.
