As a Catholic missionary in Lesotho, Sister Yvonne Maes found herself with the nickname Madiepetsan after the mythical wife of a cannibal chief, who was constantly escaping her husband’s cooking pot by using simple tricks. After eight years of scrutinizing her own relationship to men and the Church. Maes began to see the image of the cannibal’s wife with a bleak symbolic resonance: a woman who uses all of her wiles not to escape her tormentor, but to allow his dominance over her to continue. In this futile image Maes eventually came to see her own life as a dedicated nun reflected.

A sheltered Manitoba farm girl, Maes delivered herself straight from a sexually abusive father into the waiting arms of the Church. Maes‚ basic unworldliness still intact, was in her 30s when she realized her dream of missionary work in Africa. Here she encountered the man who, through ruthless sexual exploitation, exploded for Maes the myth of a benevolent Church where priests are all-knowing and irreproachable.

Working with writer Bonita Slunder, Maes writes in a prose style that rings a little overedited at times, and on occasion two separate voices seem to be at work. Nonetheless, the story is utterly compelling. In the book’s first half, her sexual naiveté seems almost incomprehensible to today’s secular sophisticate. Her abuser justifies himself with scripture and one wants to reach inside the text and give her a good shake. Years pass and she continues to write and meet with him in the hope of making their relationship “right,” which he uses as an excuse to torment her further. But it is her eventual resolve to demand retribution from the Church that inspires the reader to root for Maes in earnest. Soon she has transformed herself from a passive Madiepetsan to an avenging angel. Unfortunately, it is the process of seeking justice from an inherently self-protective institution that strips Maes of her illusions entirely and results in her renunciation of Catholicism. Scratch one young, idealistic nun for one very wise, battle-scarred woman.