"Exiles ~ A Novel" by Ron Hansen

Sooner or later, every modern poet in the English language, and nearly every one of their readers, will come upon Gerard Manley Hopkins and have a difficult time knowing what to make of him. Like him, Hopkins’ biography is slim and usually hides behind a screen in the back of the library. But once he is found, as any a poet will tell you, he is difficult not to orbit.

An insignificant Jesuit priest, as history alone measures, Hopkins’ poetry languished until well after his death. When it began to be read seriously, readers found his poetry dense. Only a humble few rather smartly worried it was not the work that was lacking. In time, his brilliance eclipsed the slurs of his critics and Hopkins is today seen as 19the Century's transformative character in English poetry.

Most of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ early work is lost and what remains of it is singularly unimpressive. A convert to Catholicism, it took yet another event, this time a tragic one, to convert his poetry into the work of genius it would become. Perhaps that judgment is not a fair one. Perhaps his poem marking the disaster it records is merely evidence of a transfiguration that would have been made in any event. It is nonetheless true that the wreck of the Deutschland off the coast of England on December 7, 1875 affected Hopkins profoundly.

There were five reasons for this emotional sea change; five German Franciscan sisters traveling who were traveling on the doomed ship and who became mythic almost before Hopkins could take time to ponder their death. In the final moments of distress, one sister from atop the rigging was heard to call upon Christ to come from behind the clouds of heaven and save them. Hopkins would memorialize them instead.

Ron Hanson, the author of The Assassination of Jesse James—a well received novel whose reputation was all but ruined by a bad film—has brought his gift for historical fiction to this story and while the results cannot be history, they can still be historical and they do illuminate many elements of the two tales he weaves together. Using the writings and family histories of many nuns who herald from this region and period, he gives a proper sense of duty and fantasy to the sisters' lives and aspirations. Likewise, he is able to flesh-out Hopkins through the recorded memories of him, as well as the history and records of the schools where he taught and the parishes where he served. Weaving his narrative between Hopkins metaphorical exile and journey and the sisters more prosaic but doomed voyage, Hanson has produced a nice compact meditation on the workings of fate as a manifestation of God’s will. This rumination may linger in the soul well after the reader’s conversation is done.