Susan Mattern is a Southern California-based speaker and the author of Poverty, Chastity & Disobedience: My six years in a Catholic convent and Out of the Lion’s Den, her memoir about a mountain lion attack on her 5-year-old daughter, Laura Small, in an Orange County park in 1986.
POVERTY, CHASTITY & DISOBEDIENCE
My six years in a Catholic convent
Susan Mattern had no problem with most of the vows when she entered the convent. Poverty was easy. She didn’t have any possessions, joining the convent directly from high school. Chastity was no big deal since she hadn’t ever met a boy she liked. But obedience? That was a problem, especially when the rules made no sense. READ MORE >>
OUT OF THE LION’S DEN
A little girl’s mountain lion attack, a mother’s search for answers.
“Out of the Lion’s Den” is the true story of five-year-old Laura Small’s attack in an Orange County, California park.
But it’s not only the story of Laura’s long recovery from brain injuries.
Her parents soon realized that the attack wasn’t just the result of a lone mountain lion. Early morning anonymous phone calls, erasures on police reports, and a California moratorium on killing lions, led a persistent investigator and a brilliant lawyer all the way to a trial against Orange County for negligence. READ MORE >>
“Poverty, Chastity, and Disobedience by Sue Mattern is insightful, delightful and revelatory. Each chapter is a story of Mattern’s experiences in religious life in the late 1960’s, a time of incredible change in the Roman Catholic Church.”
“The depicted daily life of a religious postulant is sometimes shocking, and you find yourself rooting for the author and her partner-in-crime Pam to find a way to break out of their monotony and exert some individuality.”
SUSAN’S BLOG
Virgins and Martyrs
When I was in the convent a long time ago, we had a lot of instruction periods about virgins and martyrs. I don't know why the women who were martyred were mostly virgins – I guess mothers didn't have much time to defend their faith. They were busy raising the...
6 Advantages of Turning 70
So much has been written about getting old – most of it is either trying to be funny, or it’s just plain sad. Since I’m turning 70 in a few days, I thought I’d try my hand at it.
Turning Seventy
I'm very ambivalent about turning seventy this month. On the one hand, I'm glad I'm still around for my 70th birthday. On the other hand, seventy is really OLD! I managed to pretend I was still middle-aged for a long time. I ignored my first AARP...
Chicken Dinner
My dad left Germany in 1927 to come to the United States. His father had already arrived here, and was working as a bricklayer. He told my dad there were many jobs for carpenters and that he really should come to America. So my dad left Hamburg. He was lucky to leave...
Sir Isaac Newton, the celebrated English philosopher
My dad had a lot of stories about when he came to the United States. He was lucky to leave Germany in 1927, before Hitler came to power. He was a carpenter, and had heard from his father, who was already in the US, that there were lots of jobs over in this...
Statue of Liberty
My father told me he had only cried two times in his life. The first time was after his voyage from Germany across the Atlantic. As his ship pulled into New York Harbor, he cried when he saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. The second time was when he got fired from his job at Curtiss-Wright, an American airplane manufacturer, the day the United States entered the Second World War. Even though he was a U.S. citizen, he was fired since he was German.