Exiles (2008)

HIP TO HOPKINS Ron Hansen's historical novel Exiles brings 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins vividly to life

As a reader who's always found most historical novels about as convincing as fact-based TV movies, I'd never have tried one about 19th-century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins were it not for Ron Hansen (Mariette in Ecstasy), one of our best novelists. Exiles zeroes in on one short period of Hopkins' life — circa 1875, when, as a Jesuit seminarian in Wales, he read about the death of five nuns in the sinking of a steamship and wrote what became a famous poem, ''The Wreck of the Deutschland.'' Hansen conveys a man conflicted by his callings as both a spiritual vessel and a full-blooded artist. A