Hi there, I'm Melissa Adwarnie, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day.

In the summer of 1998, a young college student had a romantic relationship with her professor.

Today, she's in her 40s, looking back, and re-examining the relationship, the impact it had on her life, and the person she was back then.

She's guided by a contemporary saint known as Monica

Lewinsky, who endured public humiliation that same summer. The book is called Dear Monica

Lewinsky, and its author, Julia Langbine, spoke with me about the origin of the story and

female saints for NPR's weekend edition.

Julia Langbine has thought a lot about the stories of the saints, particularly women's saints.

They are often presented with a temptation. So a man, Randy Pagan, comes along and wants a piece of them.

They resist. They are tortured or killed for this,

usually in quite gory ways. Like knifed in the throat, burned at the stake, stretched on a rack,

starved, then venerated for their steadfast faith. Their stories pepper Julia Langbine's new comic novel.

But the saint guiding the action has not been wronged to death.

Instead, she's survived public humiliation.

Without thinking about it, I had invoked something more than a single life.

It was an instinct, an assumption, that there was some greater being called Monica Lewinsky.

In Dear Monica Lewinsky, a woman named Gene is in turmoil over her past.

And as she reads her diary from 1998, she sees how she had judged Lewinsky for her relationship with President Clinton.

Now 45 and remembering her own mistakes, Jean calls out to Monica Lewinsky and gets

a blast of divine intercession. Then with a pang of terror, I remember what I said about her all those

years ago, how little I cared when I should have. Is she here to punish me to make me pay?

Please forgive me. I should have defended you, and instead i was unkind she stared steadily at me her chin

...