I was away from the keys for most of Thursday because I had a lunch and a talk to give at a book club in Baton Rouge. The book club asked me to talk about The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, but when the organizer of the talk discovered that I had a new book coming out next month, and that it was a kind of sequel to Little Way, she agreed that I should talk about it.

So I gave today my first book club talk about How Dante Can Save Your Life, even though the book isn’t out till April 14. It was an unusual event for me; I scarcely sounded like myself. I tend to be analytical in these things, but today, I was downright exhortative (read: I sounded like some kind of mix of a literary professor, a preacher, and Dr. Phil). But not, I think, in a bad way. I found as I spoke, not using notes, that I wanted so badly to communicate what a wondrous transformation reading Dante had made in my life. I don’t know if I’ve ever given a talk in which I was so driven by the need to make people see and feel that I had been, I don’t know, a witness to something important, something they all urgently needed to know about.

Almost all the club members had read Little Way, but I had to do a short summary of it for the few who had not. As I told that story, I could feel my heart sinking when I got to the part near the end, about the revelation my niece Hannah made in Paris, about how my sister really felt about me. I felt some of the air go out of the room when I told them that things really had not worked out as I hoped they would. The lady who was to introduce me said, “I guess you will tell us that Thomas Wolfe was wrong, and that you can go home again.” Uh, not really, I said. She seemed startled by that. And when I reached that part of the story, and told them that the hope with which I ended Little Way had not been fulfilled in the three years since, I understood the disappointment the news must have brought to the book’s fans in the audience.

But I told them that this is not a tragedy, but a comedy — that is, it has a happy ending, though God knows not the ending I would have predicted or chosen. I told the club members how sick I had become with depression and chronic mono, and how the rheumatologist told me it was because of all the stress over the chasm within my family. He advised me to move away. I told him I could not do that. He urged me to seek inner peace. And this is when I happened upon Dante.

I was completely honest with them, and told them that I am a believing Christian, and am firmly convinced that this was all part of the mysterious providence of God, who worked through that magnificent work of art to deliver me from my misery and pain. I didn’t have a lot of time, so I went through the basics of the Divine Comedy, dwelling on the specific things I learned from the journey.

I talked about the moment of revelation at Farinata’s tomb, when I discovered that I had made idols of Family and Place. I told the story of meeting Marco the Lombard on the terrace of Wrath in Purgatory, and how his counsel to the pilgrim Dante that he could solve his problems by purifying his own heart had made such a difference to me. And I spoke of Piccarda the nun in Paradise, who told Dante, “In His will is our peace,” and of Cacciaguida, Dante’s ancestor, who told him that he will never go home to Florence, but he can redeem the misery of exile through writing. There is so much more to tell, of course, but this is what I talked about today.

And then I heard myself saying things that are not like me. I talked about the liberating power of forgiveness, of repentance, of fighting hard to allow love to swallow justice in one’s own heart. I got kind of carried away, and apologized for sounding like a tub-thumper. But it was all very real to me, and I startled myself by — how to put this? — by how converted I had become thanks to the Dante pilgrimage. Certainly it deepened my Christian conversion, which is not something everyone who hears me or reads my book will be able to share. But I think everyone will recognize in the story the transforming power of humility, of forgiveness, and ultimately of love — and maybe will even grasp how it is possible for them to have the same thing, if they are willing to go on pilgrimage with Dante, and read him not just for entertainment and edification, but for the sake of saving their lives.

Anyway, it was good. It was good to talk about it. It was good to talk about finding hope and redemption after discovering your exile is permanent. I told them women of the book club the same thing I told my priest once: that if I had known what I was going to find when I got here, I never would have moved back to Louisiana. But if I had never moved back to Louisiana, I never would have made the discoveries I did about the things I needed to change to live with more light, with more love, and more fully with God. It really is true: to ascend, you must first descend, and face your inner demons. But if you can do that, and keep walking onward and upward, toward the light, you may find yourself where I was today: standing up in front of strangers talking about this amazing thing God gave you, and how a poem written 700 years ago was the key that opened the door to a future quite different from the one you imagined you would have, but better and more genuinely hopeful, because it is real.