Twists of faith

The book made Rice a nationally known author. The Rices moved back to New Orleans, where she began her road back to God. It began with small questions: The complexity of the world hinted to her of a greater plan. She delved deeper into her fascination with the contributions of Judaism to world culture. By the time she and her husband remarried in the Catholic Church in New Orleans, in 1998, she was already thinking of writing about Jesus. Then in 2002, her husband died of a brain tumor, ending a 41-year marriage she says was "a love affair until the day he died."

That year, Rice was praying at New Orleans' voluptuously beautiful St. Mary's Assumption Church, and "I realized I didn't have to write the books I had been writing forever."

Praying to Christ, she told him, "Thy will be done. I'm going to write about you. I'm going to be your apostle." She finished the first Christ book just before she moved to La Jolla in March 2005.

Rice realizes some people think she's lost it.

"People perceive that I'm putting my whole career at risk," she said. "I don't care if my books don't sell."

But at a time when Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" has marked a resurgence in fascination with Jesus, "The Da Vinci Code" has become a cultural phenomenon, and the movie version of C.S. Lewis' Narnia chronicles has even Hollywood celebrities opining on the Gospel, Rice's book made it onto the bestseller lists. Perhaps that should not be a surprise in a country in which as many as nine out of 10 people say they believe in God -- but it was to Rice. "I expected to be diminished and ignored, but I never expected to be embraced," she said.

'I want to speak out'

WHETHER her unorthodox opinions on the church will be embraced is another matter.

"I think it's sad that the strident voices of Christianity have cemented in the public mind that we are dumb," she said. "I feel I have to play my role as an artist and creator. But like many Christians, I want to speak out for what I believe in."

Her son, Christopher, a slender, delicate-looking 27-year-old, said he knew his mother had gone back to the church and was writing a fictional biography of Jesus, but "I didn't realize she decided to dedicate her work to Jesus Christ until she told a real estate agent in La Jolla a year ago. I was in the room. I was like, 'Oh.' "