In 2002, four years after returning to the Catholic faith of her childhood, best-selling vampire novelist Anne Rice decided to consecrate her considerable narrative powers to the Lord. From the moment she made a private vow in church to only write for the honor and glory of God, she experienced a healing from chronic depression.

At the time, Rice didn't realize she had been healed until she proceeded to have one good day after another. "I think I'd been depressed for years. My books reflect that," Rice told The Tidings during a Los Angeles book tour stop Dec. 1 promoting her new novel on the hidden life of Jesus' childhood, "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt."

Already a best seller since its Nov. 1 debut, the book written in the first-person voice of seven-year-old Jesus has generated what some are calling a print phenomenon reminiscent of last year's blockbuster film, "The Passion of the Christ."

"Writing this book deepened my faith," said Rice. "It was a personal journey to make a probable reality. I'm a very different person."

'Old-fashioned' roots

Rice, 64, who was born in New Orleans near the Garden District, grew up in an "old-fashioned" Irish and German parish where she remembers spending hours in church. "It was a very sensuous, ornate and pervasive Catholicism. We really lived our faith," said Rice.

But in college, finding herself in the midst of a Protestant community at Texas Women's University in Denton, Texas, was "a shock" for Rice, who abandoned religion at age 18. Still, "when I lost my faith, I didn't go morally wild," she said. "Like many secular atheists, I knew I cared a lot." She married her atheist high school sweetheart, poet Stan Rice, in 1961.

Tragedy stuck in 1972 when the couple's five-year-old daughter, Michele, died of Leukemia. Two years before her son Christopher's birth in 1978, Rice published her best-seller, "Interview with the Vampire," and proceeded to write a book a year for the next 25 years. (Her 26 books, including her vampire novellas, witches' trilogy, and, now, "Christ the Lord," have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.)

"The whole theme of 'Interview with the Vampire' was Louis' quest for meaning in a godless world," Rice explained. "He searched to find the oldest existing 'immortal' simply to ask 'What is the meaning of what we are?'" Her vampire imagery, she said, reflected her "mourning for lost Eucharist."

Back at the table

"It's great to be back to the banquet table," commented Rice about her return to Catholicism. Her Catholic faith sustained her during her husband's illness and death in 2002 from a fast-growing brain tumor, just a few months after Rice's decision to write about Jesus. "The Lord let me find direction before the tempest," said Rice.

She wrote "Christ the Lord" at night in New Orleans while her staff slept. After working through the night, she would go to church at 4:30 a.m. for public recitation of the rosary before attending Mass at dawn. While praying and meditating each morning, she often received inspiration for her next writing session.

"What I did was take the Jesus of the Gospels, the Son of God, the Son of the Virgin Mary, and sought to make Him utterly believable, a vital breathing character," explained Rice. "This was a huge challenge. I had to move in His world, and know His world, and that took immense research."

She pored over the Gospel texts and studied the works of first century historians, especially Josephus and Philo of Alexandria. She also incorporated legends from non-canonical works such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, a second century work that shows Jesus learning to use his divine powers for good. In addition, she read as much as she could of New Testament scholarship, including works by Catholic scholars Meier and Brown.

Lay witness

"My mission now is to write these books as a lay witness to the story of Christ," said Rice. "Christ the Lord" focuses on one year in the hidden life of Christ, when his extended family of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and stepbrother, James, (mentioned in Josephus and various legends) moved from Alexandria, Egypt, to their ancestral home in Nazareth, visiting the great temple at Jerusalem along the way.

Readers see through the eyes of the boy Jesus, struggling to understand his miraculous powers and numinous birth. Rice has been gratified by readers' responses to her portrayals of Jesus' family. Her sheltered and vulnerable Mary who experienced the "magnificent and harrowing" annunciation was called "perfect" by a priest-fan attending a Nov. 30 Pasadena book signing, while many fans have told Rice they are deeply moved by James' repentance of sibling jealously in the Temple.

"All Christian art has one goal: to bring you closer to God," said Rice, now a La Jolla resident (she moved from New Orleans six months before the devastation of hurricane Katrina). She intends to visit the Holy Land this month to research her next book that begins right before Jesus' public ministry and ends with his first miracle.

"Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" is published by Knopf. The hardcover book, priced at $25.95, is available at Borders Books and Vroman's in Pasadena as well as amazon.com.