Books: Monica's Coming Out

I LEAP OVER THE WALL (313 pp.)—Monica Baldwin—Rinehart ($3.50).

Devout or not, thousands of U.S. readers have plowed through the books of Trappist Thomas Merton (The Seven Storey Mountain, The Waters of Siloe) with wondering attention. What makes a man give up the world? What is his life like when he does? Monica Baldwin's I Leap Over the Wall is Merton in reverse: the story of a British nun who went back to the world.

The year was 1914 and Monica Baldwin was 17 when she took the veil of a Roman Catholic religious order...