It's been more than 20 years since Kathleen Norris first discovered the term "acedia" in a monastery library. For her, reading a fourth-century monk's writing about acedia (supreme indifference or, literally, "not caring") diagnosed exactly what she had long experienced—a depression that wasn't quite depression, a slothfulness that was not at all laziness, a world weariness that sucked the life out of her and her work. "He was describing something that I'd never heard of, but that I knew," Norris told RBL from her home in Honolulu. "I'm looking at the words of this guy who died in 399, and I'm thinking, 'How did he know?' "

Contemporary readers may well have the same reaction when they read Norris's new book, Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, due out from Riverhead on September 16. The memoir, which got a starred review in PW on June 9, describes Norris's personal wrestlings with acedia, and how her three-decade marriage and her spiritual practices have functioned as a tether to life and art. (Praying the Psalms, she says, is a "weapon against acedia," since the discipline teaches that repetition leads not to apparent meaninglessness, but to renewal and epiphany.)

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