THE THRILL OF THE CHASTE

by Dawn Eden

Thomas Nelson, 2006

224 pages, $13.99

Available in bookstores

Today’s popular culture pushes young single women to believe that, if they don’t make themselves sexually available, they’ll never find husbands. It also seduces them into concluding that a sure path to pre-marital fun, freedom and fulfillment is the one marked Promiscuity Way. Miss a ride down this road, the signals say, and you’re missing out on the time of your life.

For Manhattan-based editor Dawn Eden, the challenge was to see if she could leave each party with a handsome guy who, after a no-strings night of instant intimacy, just might turn out to be Mr. Right. She played this game for years until she realized that the happiness she sought couldn’t be found in the hookup game.

In this, her first book — subtitled Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On — Eden tells how she went from living “Sex and the City” to living out Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body.

It was Eden’s hunger for true and lasting happiness that led to her saying, St. Augustine-like, Yes to Christ and Yes to premarital chastity. Born Jewish, she came to the Catholic faith by way of evangelical Protestantism. She tells her readers, in so many words: Perfect your relationship with God because he is the Other your heart really desires in its deepest places.

Eden is fearless about sharing details of her personal life so that others might learn from her mistakes. Her story, told with breezy wit and peppered with literary and pop-culture references, makes for an eye-opening and persuasive witness.            

One aspect she might have explored in more detail is her discernment process, as the book assumes that marriage is every young woman’s goal. Did she ever pray about a possible religious vocation? How did she come to know she was called to the married life? We don’t know, but she makes up for this oversight by turning her readers away from obsessing over husband-hunting and toward trying to follow God’s will.

“The time God gives you to be single is precious, and not merely because you have more freedom than a married woman to do what you want to do when you want to do it,” she writes. “It’s precious because you have a unique opportunity to bring all your spiritual graces to full flower — and to do so in a way that will bear fruit for the rest of your life.”

A warning: This book is not for everyone. Eden’s frank accounting of her former worldly ways may shock some readers. Her clear aim is to unveil the ugliness and confusion of sin by holding it up in bold relief against the beauty and peace of life in Christ. Her intended audience is not teens but singles in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

Also, Eden did much of her work on this book before she entered the Church last Easter. That’s apparent, as there’s no mention of the sacrament of reconciliation. Then again, she’s trying to reach as wide an audience as possible among those who most need to hear Thrill’s nuanced call to Christian conversion.

Ultimately, if you are not among those who struggle to resist the “Sex and the City” lifestyle, you probably can’t relate to Eden’s testimony. But chances are that you know someone who can. In any case, Eden’s insights about the dignity of man and the divine origins of the vocation of marriage reveal a thoroughly modern woman seeking the will of God without compromise. And not a few adult Catholic readers should be edified by that.

Robyn Lee is the Register’s

editorial assistant.