Gertrud von le Fort, a German Catholic writer and friend in the last years of Edith Stein’s life, recounts a historical event: the death of sixteen Carmelite nuns from the Compiègne convent in 1794, during the period known as the Terror, following the French Revolution.
Von le Fort creates a fictional character, Blanche de la Force, a young aristocrat who enters the Carmelite convent and, advised by her prioress, leaves it as a novice for being too weak, before definitively taking the religious habit.
The story, in epistolary form, allows the author to explore themes as diverse as mass hysteria, power, devotion to God, and martyrdom. In the letter, she recounts what happened to this group of nuns on their way to the scaffold during the last days of the Terror, when the guillotine was still working relentlessly.
And, beyond human desires and predictions, martyrdom is also for those whom God calls.
This novel served as the basis for a famous later book, Dialogues of the Carmelites by Georges Bernanos, as well as the opera of the same name composed by Francis Poulenc, and the equally famous film adaptation.