John L'Heureux has spent his long, prolific career exploring questions of morality and faith in stories that entertain, surprise, and sometimes disturb. Entertain because life is short and often disappointing. Surprise because it is in those moments we are most ready to be moved or enlightened. Disturb because fiction can offer a challenge as to how we live our lives. A former Jesuit priest and longtime director of Stanford's creative writing program, L'Heureux writes with wit and elegance, passion and irony about the moments of joy, doubt, transcendence that alter the course of a life: a priest seeking laicization endures endless and absurd questioning; a torturer's assistant justifies his vocation by offering comfort to his patients; and baffled academics wonder about the point of it all. The Heart Is a Full-Wild Beast compiles the enduring stories of a distinctive American writer.
