Thanks to those who pre-ordered some of the great forthcoming books we highlighted in the last BookNotes. As I wrote to many of you, it really does give us hope when folks buy books; it’s a reminder that there are those who want to learn, to grow, to deepen their discipleship, to serve God more fruitfully. Who still care about the printed page and about bookstores. Who look to us to help them out. That you appreciate our curation and order from our small town, independent, bricks-and-mortar  family business is really appreciated. It matters to us a lot.

Those books were written by authors you most likely have heard of (and if you’ve read BookNotes before, I’m quite sure you have!) Some of the books are eagerly awaited; they’ve got that buzz going on. Sometimes, though, I want to give a quick shout-out to some authors you mostly haven’t heard of, or, in some cases, a well-known author who releases a new book that is published by a small or indie press that you may not know about.

We get unsolicited manuscripts and samples of self-published books all the time. I’m sorry to say that many are pretty poorly done. Even the covers and font and page design illustrate that they are sub-par. As they say down south, “Bless their hearts” for trying. Some are fine, but just very personal, or for a niche interest and not the sort of thing we can in good conscious recommend very widely.

Sometimes, though, there are small press or self-published titles that are really good, well crafted by thoughtful authors, books that we think we should amplify a bit. Here, then, are twelve new indie/self-published works we want to tell you about.

We show the regular retail price, but all are 20% OFF; we will deduct the discount for you.  You can easily order them by using our secure order form page by clicking the link at the end of the column.

Apparent Faith: What Fatherhood Taught Me About the Father’s Heart Karl Forehand (Quoir) $19.99 Karl is a new friend, a friend of some other friends, and a former pastor who now attends Brian Zahnd’s church in Missouri. Forehand’s story is gently told and it is, I think, a fairly common one, especially these days. He has shifted from a more legalistic and strict conservative faith to a more open and generous one. Memoirs of how folks have shifted in their faith journey are not uncommon and are often moving – think of Rachel Held Evans or Pete Enns, just for instance – and in a way, this is one of those sorts of stories of a traditionalist evangelical has refreshed his understanding of God.

Here’s what makes this different: Karl offers here less a diatribe against wrong-headed fundamentalism and rather tells a story of his life as a father. As a dad of adult children that I admire, I liked this a lot. In a quiet, non-nonsense way he wears his heart on his sleeve, telling how he raised his children (and how he and his wife are loving their grandchildren.) It may have been from Brian McLaren where I first heard this analogy, but Karl notes that surely God (who Jesus tells us to call Father and to relate to as a caring parents) is a better parent than we are. We forgive our kids when they screw up, we are patient, we try to understand their issues, we don’t make them grovel. Good parents are a signal of transcendence, as they say, a pointer, in some ways, to the goodness of God’s holy, royal, cosmic Parenthood. It is a commonplace that we form our view of God from our earthly parents. There are books that even explore that, how we think about our own parents and how (sometimes) that has given us bad views of God. I don’t think I know of any book like this, that explores a change in one’s view of God by pondering one’s own parenting.

Kudos to Karl Forehand for his own work as a leadership coach and faithful follower of Jesus. Thanks for sharing in plain prose how as a dad you see your family, your parenting, your faith. As Brian Zahnd says of the book “I call this the water to wine journey. Karl’s journey has not been without pain, but it has been beautiful.”  Indeed.

Beyond Stewardship: New Approaches to Creation Care edited by David Paul Warners & Matthew Kuperus Heun (Calvin College Press) $17.99 We stock everything of this small college press (including their marvelous, brief paperbacks in their “Calvin Shorts” series.) This is a major new work and might have been well-served by being shopped around to be released on a major, prestigious publisher because Beyond Stewardship is brilliant in its overall vision and wonderful in how it has offered so many interesting, astute, and vitally important contributions to the conversations about faith and what some call creation-care. This fascinating and generative book deserves a more careful review and I hope to do that, soon.

Here’s the basic gist: Beyond Stewardship is a collection of about 15 chapters offered by a wonderful crew of interdisciplinary scholars who invite us to think whether “stewardship” is the best way to describe humankind’s relationship with the other-than-human creation. For decades, theologians (especially those within the evangelical tradition who want to be intentionally shaped by the Bible) have drawn on the deep and rich notion of being house-holders, care-takers, managers and vice-regents of God’s good but fallen world. Stewardship, we often say, is more than giving money to church (as it has woefully been reduced to within the common church-goer’s imagination.) It is caring for resources and managing them well.

It doesn’t take too much thought or observation to realize the importance of asking if this is actually the best way to talk about what Genesis calls oikonomia, the home-making calling to tend and keep the economy of the garden. And it doesn’t take too much thought or consideration to see that it may not be fruitful to think of ourselves as “over” the other creatures, distant from, “using” them. This fine book from Calvin College Press is a tremendous and important conversation about that question.

Here are three quick things that might inspire you to order this from us. First, I’m happy to say that one of the authors in this book is one of our very best friends, Gail Gunst Heffner, who has for years, with other colleagues and students at Calvin College (now University) have been painstakingly and lovingly working to restore a deteriorating stream in their Grand Rapids area watershed. The “Plaster Creek Stewards” have gotten some national attention and their deep involvement helping the college use its resources to serve the community has helped many of them, Gail included, to increasingly doubt the ultimate usefulness of the “stewardship” model. (Gail, by the way, has a chapter in Beyond Stewardship on what is often called environmental racism and it is clear, succinct, tender, and prophetic.) Gail used to work for the Pittsburgh-based campus ministry organization. the CCO, and is truly beloved by so many. So – friends and alum of CCO and others who appreciate Gail’s friendship and work and witness – you should pick this up.

Secondly, Gail isn’t the only person in this book we admire. Steven Bouma-Prediger (who teaches at Hope College and has a forthcoming book, releasing in January 2020 called Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic) has a lovely piece I adored, making the overt case why we should “move from stewardship to earthkeeping.” James R. Skillen (son of the political scientist and neo-Calvinist author) uses his expertise in geology to get at the topic in light of the Biblical teaching of the Kingdom of God. There are other Calvin profs who have made vital contributions – English professor and wondrous writer Debra Rienstra has a chapter called “What’s That? Naming, Knowing, Delighting, Caring, Suffering” that is a great essay helping us to reorient our imagination and find hopeful ways forward. The piece “From Stewardship to Place-making and Place-Keeping” resonated with me a lot. Editor David Paul Warner’s has a beautiful chapter called “Walking Through a World of Gifts.”

There’s so much in here. There is an art piece, a delightful student contribution, excellent discussion questions and other creative touches. Contributors include the likes of Aminah Al-Attas Bradford, an ordained CRC minister and a PhD candidate at Duke; she is theologian who knows her way around the sciences, a Barth and microbial scholar. Matthew Halteman has written on our relationship with animals and co-editor Matthew Kuperus Heun is a professor of engineering. One author is a city and regional planner, another teaches economics. One is climate change activist, another tells of outdoor educational experiences. All of these involved scholars are deeply committed to notions of sustainability and asking big questions about a faithful worldview and how to live into God’s ways in God’s world.

I will explain more in a future review, but there is a great afterword by the great Loren Wilkinson whose book Earthkeeping was the first book (in the late 70s) produced through the Calvin Center on Christian Scholarship. They grappled with the word stewardship in those years and his story (shared briefly, co-authored by Cal DeWitt and Eugene Dykema) offers a very nice historical touch. For those who have followed this movement over the years, is nearly worth the price of the book.

Prophetic Whirlwind: Uncovering the Black Biblical Destiny Onleilove Chika Alston (Voices Publishing) $24.99  Again, every now and then we are just delighted to find a vibrant writer and spokesperson who is doing extraordinary work but whose book is not widely known outside of their own niche circles.

We have heard of Onleilove (who holds both an M.Div and MSW degrees) since she was an active student leader at Penn State, a scholar in New York City, an activist in Baltimore, and a contributed editor to Sojourners. (In fact, she had a much-cited cover story on “King Coal” and other Appalachian struggles. Kudos to Leroy and Donna Barber for re-issuing her Prophetic Whirlwind book through their recent Voices Project.

Prophetic Whirlwind is a whirlwind tour through a lot of content, deftly combining historical research and Bible study, African American studies scholarship and African stories. She has traveled all around the world (Scotland! Switzerland!) lecturing on her topic about the African roots of the Bible (and the Hebraic culture preserved in Africa!) Is the Bible an African book? Are some of the indigenous cultures of black people really the social context of some of the Bible? Why have many missed the allusions to many African and black-skinned people and cultures in the Scriptures? Who and where are the “lost tribes” of Israel? Why do many African tribes seem to have Hebraic connections?

She was asked to come to West Africa by the African Hebrew leaders there and has done research in Ghana, Togo, Nigeria. This is mind-blowing and fascinating stuff, and while not the first book exploring this “white washing” of the Bible, it is certainly one of the best.

It is a unique book, even within Afro-centric Biblical studies and you should know about it. The author worships with Beth-El The House of Yahweh, a 65-year old Messianic Hebrew congregation in the South Bronx.

A Restless Age: How Saint Augustine Helps You Make Sense of Your Twenties Austin Gohn (with a foreword by Wesley Hill) (GCD Books) $12.99  As many are waiting on the forthcoming work by Jamie Smith (On the Road with Saint Augustine) might I suggest this as an excellent companion volume. In fact, whether you are attracted to Smith’s heady study or not, A Restless Age is the best introduction to Augustine’s Confessions I have yet seen. Everybody knows that Confessions (for any number of reasons) is an important classic in the Western canon and a must-read for anyone wanting to be fluent in the standards of ancient Christian books.

We met this young pastor, Austin Gohn, at the Pittsburgh Jubilee conference a few years ago when he was in the research stage for this book; he was fired up and confident and a year later, the book was in production.  What a delight to have seen it develop, to come to know Austin just a bit, to realize that he is a rare leader – a lively evangelical working with teens and young adults who has read deeply and widely. And he gets exactly how Augustine’s own restlessness is similar to the postmodern angst and restlessness of emerging adults in these days. This book is a great introduction to the great third century frat boy turned seeker turned disciple of Jesus who became a Bishop from Northern African.

Here is what I want to be clear about: A Restless Age is a book for anyone even though Gohn wisely guides young adults through this relevant text, showing how Confessions can be useful for such young-ish readers. But I think it is equally helpful for any of us who need some help realizing why Augustine is important. It is more than a “Cliff Notes” summary, although it might serve that useful function for someone who has no idea what to expect from reading Confessions. Gohn even has a fabulous appendix which is a playful and candid reader’s guide, inviting beginners to even skip certain parts of the tome (the first time through, at least) telling us what to look for and what to watch out for. Gohn recommends, by the way, the lovely, lively translation by Sarah Ruden who has a great endorsing blurb on the back. Nice!

So, if you are new to Augustine no matter your age, you will enjoy A Restless Age. If you are in your late teens or a twenty-something, by all means, realize this book is for you. And if you care about young adults, are a youth leader or college minister or campus pastor/chaplain, or parent of a millennial, you really should read this book. It’s from a small, classy publisher you may not have heard of. We’re thrilled to be able to let folks know about it.

As Wes Hill writes in his generous introduction,

Although it’s been almost a decade since I exited my twenties, I still recall with mingled happiness and grief my trip through those trying, stretching, enlivening years. I started to question the certainties of my childhood faith. I fell in love for the first time and lost my best friend. I moved away from home and tried to forge a new identity. Through it all, I never lost my hunger to fine God – or to be found by Him. I wish I had had A Restless Age to read during those years, not only for its witty diagnoses of twentysomething angst and its “Oh that’s so true!” insights into what makes young adults tick but also for its generous, compelling introduction to a saint who could have helped me hold on to faith and maybe even thrive.

Listen to our friend Erica Young Reitz, who wrote the fabulous After College:

One of life’s biggest struggles for twentysomethings – for most of us – is making time for self-reflection in the midst of our hurried, on-to-the-next-thing lives. We’re running on the outside and restless on the inside == just like Saint Augustine. With witty metaphors and a deep understanding of our cultural moment, Austin Gohn brings this ancient saint into our present struggles. A Restless Age normalizes our angst, but — most importantly – offers a way out of it.

The Just and Loving Gaze of God With Us: Paul’s Apocalyptic Political Theology Henry Walter Spaulding III (Wipf & Stock) $36.00  Hank has become a good friend and a great customer of ours, even stopping by the store (on his way to and fro from, oh, say, stuff like a Princeton Barth conference where he was presenting.) Young, casual, widely read, a passionate teacher and principled supporter of indie booksellers like us – what’s not to like? Well, I have to admit, I’m inclined to promote books by authors who support us (it’s a bit annoying when folks expect us to sell their book, even if they’ve never darkened our door or sent us as much as a an email and push people to Amazon regularly on their own social media. Really?) But Hank showed up here seeking books perhaps not even knowing we had his book in our cluttered and jam-packed New Testament section. With blurbs on the back from the likes of William Cavanaugh and citing many other “ethical” readings of Pauline politics I realized quickly that The Just and Loving Gaze is a serious and important contribution to New Testament studies and contemporary discipleship. Now that we’ve met him, we’re even more thrilled to tell you about it and to commend it to you.

I can’t say for sure who should buy a book like this; it is serious, academic (most likely a PhD dissertation made more user-friendly for a wider audience) but yet would appeal to those who have read, say, Roman’s Disarmed or even the good work of Michael Gorman, who he esteems. In this work, Spaulding quotes womanist ethicist Emily Townes and, naturally, political exegetes like Neil Elliott. He does the critique of modernity a la Foucault and Walter Benjamin. This maybe leads him to Oliver O’Donovan. From his time at Duke he became friends with race scholars Willie Jennings and J. Kameron Carter and knows Amy Laura Hall. He draws on Yoder a bit, which I suspect he got from Hauerwas, and thanks Richard Hays. He loves Barth’s epistle to the Romans and is a Wesleyan. So there ya go.

And he is a clear writer; a good teacher who cares about the gospel and its implications for the hyper-modern world.

As Philip Ziegler (of the University of Aberdeen) says:

Provoked by recent philosophical interest in the Apostle Paul, Spaulding here pushes back into Paul’s inalienably theological politics in pursuit of an understanding of Christian political responsibility today. The resulting theological, biblical, and philosophical conversation that ensues is rich and engaging, drawing together a range of voices (when did Wesley, Kasemann, Arendt, and Iris Murdoch last meet one another on the pages of a book!) It offers a compelling vision of an inhabitable Pauline politics of both the already and the not yet.

The Dream: A Novel  Deborah Arlene (Christian Faith Publishing) $16.95  If you visit our Hearts & Minds Facebook group you might find a handful of folks offering suggestions and reviews. I invited Deborah to tell us there just a bit about her new novel in part because – whether it’s high quality, literary literature or just an inspiring, earnest story nicely told – some books deserve to be known. And there’s a bit of backstory about The Dream, and it is so frustrating. Let me explain. First, you should know that it is a story that has an anti-abortion message, or, I should say, a truly pro-life one, as the tender story embraces the controversial and painful topic of abortion by imagining the tale of a woman who is helped by good folks at a Christian crisis pregnancy center. As one who has been involved with a couple such centers, I am happy to know there is a novel that captures the life-changing stories that the care-givers in those places hear and help facilitate day in and day out. Carrying a pregnancy to term when the situation is complicated is emotionally hard, and the support these sorts of places give is often extraordinary. The hardships of an unexpected (and, at first, perhaps unwanted) pregnancy can be made less so with a little bit of lovin’ care. This shouldn’t be controversial, and all sides of the policy and legal debates should affirm that helping women with her choice to carry a crisis pregnancy is a good thing.

Alas, Deborah told me that for some odd reason, Twitter cancelled all her followers. They somehow though her simple story was too controversial for even the wild digital West of social media. Are you kidding me? She rebuilt a bunch of followers and tried again to communicate with them about her new novel and – yep – got oddly banished again. I see this as an inexplicable affront to liberal values like freedom of speech and freedom of the arts, but can’t say much more since I don’t understand why Twitter would ban an innocuous, inspiring story about evangelical women helping promote their pro-life views by actually helping another woman. Maybe they realize that a simple story can be more subversive than we think: maybe various sides of this issue might see things a bit differently by engaging a tale like this that is honest about the twists and turns of those involved in these kinds of complex decisions. Even if the big guns try to silence her, we’re happy to stock this new novel by a central Pennsylvania writer.

A More Christlike Way: A More Beautiful Faith Bradley Jersak (CWR Press) $19.99 I’m really excited to tell you about this small press release even though I don’t even know what CWR Press is; its related to CWR Magazine, which is some Jesusy Canuck ‘zine that I also don’t know much about. But I love this author! We’ve stocked other books by this ambitious thinker and Dean of the Masters of Ministry program at St. Stephen’s University in New Brunswick, Canada. We stock his serious academic tomes like Her Gates Will Never Be Shut about “Hell, Hope, and the New Jerusalem” to the lovely, thoughtfully done children’s picture book with sophisticated text, Jesus Showed Us! This new one, A More Christlike Way is a sequel to his A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel. In each case, Jersak is doing what other thinkers are also helping us with (I think of Brian Zahnd and his Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God) in raising up a very high Christology and insisting that however we know God, think about the Old Testament, o define the gospel itself, it has to be done through the lens of Jesus the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God-in-the-flesh. It is hard to argue with that, it seems to me, and his pressing Christ-like and Christ-commanded compassion to its logical implications (a non-violent understanding of the atonement, a Christ-like mercy in thinking about eternity, a Kingdom-centered gospel where Christ is lifted up and actually followed, and the like) is urgent, vital, important. Theologians will debate all of this, I’m sure, but Jersak here sets forth, as Zahnd puts it, “a vision for following Jesus that is in keeping with the kind of faith that first turned the world upside down two thousand years ago.”

The endorsements on the back of A More Christlike Way come from a wide variety of readers – Wendy Gritter, who wrote Generous Spaciousness, Jim Forest, the Orthodox peacemaker (and old friend of Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day) and Father Kenneth Tanner (an evangelically-minded Anglican) who says that “Jersak is here your reliable Sherpa, a guide and fellow pilgrim…”

By the way, we have his other small-sized, brand new, independently published release, In: Incarnation & Inclusion, Abba & Lamb (St. Macrina Press; $18.95.) Yes!

Calling Mother: Out of Darkness into Light Cathleen Cody Lauer (self published) $19.95 This wondrous book is a small, quiet gem, wonderfully crafted and creatively written. It is nearly a small art book – more than a poet’s chapbook – but glorious in that same, artful way; the paper quality is good and there are touches of color throughout. To have it in your hand is to realize you are experiencing something very special, owning a book that but for serendipity you may not otherwise even know about, and you will be glad. Perhaps offering an outright “thanks be to God” or a Nunc Dimittis. How did we even learn of this?

Cathleen has long been a supporter of our store and her husband, Jonathan, is a dear pal – he spent most of his professional career laboring as a librarian at Messiah College near us in central Pennsylvania. (And on occasion, teaching legendary courses on Bob Dylan.) Cathleen took up writing a decade or more ago and started to experiment with her craft – journals, memories, essays, poems, prayers, and more. About the same time she was learning to be a spiritual director, increasingly entering that world of ecumenical spirituality and contemplative reflections. And she wanted to write.

As she tells us in the beginning of Calling Mother she started using her phone calls with her colorful, elderly mother as a catalyst, a holy nudge, to pick up her pen. This new powerful collection of short essays and ruminations is the result.

I like very much that she utilized the extraordinary gifts of small bookmaker and graphic designer Kathy Hettinga to do the artful design work for Calling Mother. Hettinga has a brief afterward explaining some of the historically inspired doo-dads (okay, that’s not the word for these shapes that adorn the pages – they are actually Bodoni Ornaments from 1798 and the more modern (1997) Hypnopaedia. These touches – along with some exceptionally well-selected handwriting pages reproduced from Cathleen’s grandmother! – make this a delight to behold.

With the passing of my own mother a few weeks ago, I am sadder than I think I expected to be. I’m not sure why I need to write this to you other than to say that his poignant book is, as I’ve noted, a set of memories and creative writing pieces inspired by real conversation the author had with her aging mother and it has come to mean a lot to me, now. A few of the essays capture, in fact, good talks they had not long before Cecelia died. There is stuff here about calling home, about calling mom and it moves me just thinking about this holy ritual. Some of you know what I’m talking about. Although the lovely prose (and a few poems and prayers) about these calls will surely be appreciated and pondered by many readers – especially those of us with aging parents, or those of us interested in our parent’s own younger lives – it really is a mother/daughter book. It is about their relationship, more so, their conversations and, as one reviewer put it, the holy silences in the spaces.

Do you wonder what mindful conversations are really like? Would you like to deepen the habits of heart that allow you to ponder good talks with loved ones? Do you wish for deeper relationships with your own parents? This great little book documents an authentic relationship and is a beautiful artifact of those conversations. And the holy spaces. We are so pleased to commend it to you. Perhaps you might even give it to your own mother (or daughter.)

The Theopolitan Vision Peter J. Leithart (Theopolis Books/Athanasius Press) $12.95  Do you know Peter Leithart and his fascinating, Birmingham-based “Theopolis Institute”? He invites men and women into an intense, residential Fellows program relating, as they put it, “Bible, liturgy and culture.” Doc Leithart is colorful, undeniably brilliant, liturgically-minded, Reformed. You many know of his serious Bible commentaries, his little studies of Jane Austen, or his little book Shining Glory on the Terrence Malick film The Tree of Life which he relates to the book of Job. He’s done Between Babel and the Beast (on “America and Empires in Biblical Perspective”) and a curious study called Defending Constantine: The Twilight of Empire and the Dawn of Christendom that I suspect I don’t adequately understand. Leithart has written on Mercersburg theology and did a fabulous book called Solomon Among the Postmoderns. I liked this Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience. He did a big, scholarly book on the history and experience of gratitude published in hardback by Baylor University Press. And that’s not even all of it. Despite this prodigious, thoughtful output, he’s started this recent educational/formational ministry and this new little book is a bit of a manifesto.

Here is how his publisher describes the small book, the first in a handful of succinct tracts about the vision for the Institute. It’s a bit generic, I suppose, but if you know Dr. Leithart, you know the small The Theopolitan Vision is anything but generic and certainly spicy enough to stimulate even the hardest of hearts.

As the modern world crumbles, Christians scramble for answers. The solution is the Christian church, an outpost of the heavenly city among the cities of men. The author explains what the church is, and how the Spirit empowers the church’s world-transforming mission through Word and worship, and Scripture and liturgy. It shows how the church can be a city of light in a dark age.

Godly Character(s): Insights for Spiritual Passion from the Lives of 8 Women in the Bible Lisa Smith (Square Halo Books) $16.99  How can I offer a list of rare books by indie publishers and not mention our friends at the classy boutique publisher out of Lancaster, PA, called, curiously, Square Halo Books? We love this little outfit and appreciate their eager collaboration with us. (They are the ones who surprised us with a book on our bookstore’s 35^th anniversary, created with chapters by friends and respected scholars, called A Book for Hearts & Minds: What to Read and Why.) You may know they do widely respected books on faith and the arts, on popular culture (like BIgger on the Inside, their book on Doctor Who) and books that teach us how to best “lean in” to and faithfully engage our contemporary world. (See, for instance, the fabulous, entertaining and deeply wise Good Posture: Engaging Current Culture with Ancient Faith by Square Halo booster and pal, Tom Becker of the Lancaster Row House Forums. And, okay, I’ll say it — my own little book, the quite handsome and meaty Serious Dreams: Big Ideas for the Rest of Your Life.) We stock all the books that Square Halo publishes and have reviewed all of their two dozen or so books here at BookNotes. They are top-shelf!

Their most recent release is Godly Character(s) and I did indeed give it a nice mention when it arrived several months back. Alas, it is so handsomely done, so winsome and smart, so engagingly written, that it surely deserves another shout-out here. Lisa Smith is a college literature professor so she is a good writer, creative and eloquent and colorful and vivid. She tells about Bible characters and relates them wonderful to our contemporary culture. She mixes references from acclaimed literature and pop culture, relating Word to world in a way that is gospel-clear and yet beautifully relevant. To be sure, it is about gaining a passion for habits of godliness and it is about how God’s grace can transform us from the inside out. This is the point – helping us all be shaped in Christ-likeness in these weird times. That she does it through a good study of women In the Bible is nice – and not just for women readers or ladies Bible studies.

The book is rich and engaging, so this blurb doesn’t quite capture it all, but here is how they explain their final hopes for it:

Igniting spiritual passion doesn’t have to be a mysterious process. By conforming our character to God’s design, we can awaken in our hearts a sincere love for him. That rekindled affection can drive us to deeper intimacy with God and lead to greater joy in our daily lives.

With Us: Everyday Evidence of God’s Presence Kelly Willie (XulonElite) $15.99  When this inspiring, delightful book first came out, I was eager to read it and happy to promote it. It is about a topic we think folks find helpful — the spirituality of the ordinary, so to speak — and also because it was nicely written, sensible, interesting, with some great stories and illustrations of her spiritual discoveries. One reviewer on the back cover said “With Us is a wakeup call for the soul that has been lulled to sleep by the inattentiveness to God’s presence every day.”

Ms Willie is a contemporary worship pastor at the large Grace Church just south of us in Shrewsbury PA and is a singer-songwriter with some Gospel Music Association connections Nashville. Maybe because she is an artist she has a particularly keen sense of what it means to see God’s creative hand as we “number our days” day by day.

We’ve made big lists of books about the spirituality of the mundane and how to practice the presence of God in ordinary stuff. From the best-selling, incredibly interesting and wise Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Harrison Warren to the beautiful A Tree Full of Angels: Seeing the Holy in the Ordinary by Sister Macrina Wiederkehr to the latest by popular woman’s writer Shannan Martin, The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You there are lots of books that help us expect to sense God’s presence in the commonplaces of life.

Yet, although With Us is somewhat like those sorts of books, celebrating God’s sometimes quiet intrusion into our daily lives, this one has a certain upbeat verve to it that was captivating for me, making it a real encouragement. Other authors give you tools and techniques to move towards mindfulness or a centered attentiveness to the love and presence of God. This book tells you about how the author herself discovered that, coming to know and trust God more deeply, day by day. And what discoveries she has had!

Kelly Willie has survived near death experiences and (maybe surprisingly?) is still, obviously a fun and funny person who likes to laugh. She has seen some hard stuff, but still wants to follow Jesus. She trusts the Divine pointers she’s discerned and followed the glimpses of His glory in a way that she really, truly believes that God is pursuing us and that if we are open, we, too, can discern these “fingerprints that are evident everywhere.”

With Us has 30 chapters, each rooted around an episode that she brings to life through her splendid storytelling. Some of her exploits are hilarious, some quite serious, most really down-to-Earth. Given that she is a worship leader at an evangelical mega-church, I assumed With Us would be overly pious with lots of charismatic lingo. Of course, there is some of that. And the girl can preach!  But I was delighted at how down to earth and real she was. Kelly explores a theme in each chapter — but it isn’t too didactic or self-evident, as the insights unfold through the story. The stories are simply rendered and captivating, as she introduces us to a cast of characters, from a woman who wore pearls with her flannel and camo to the tender, awful story of the death of a child, to “cliff jumping” with her hubby. Or a chapter about our legendary friends at the local Brown’s Orchard where she plays the role of Norm from Cheers. There is plenty of Bible references here and there are reflection questions inviting us to go a bit deeper in our own faith journey. With Us is a nice book by a local evangelical leader and we are happy to tell you about it.

A Theology of the Ordinary Julie Canlis (Godspeed Press) $12.99 I mentioned above our fascination with books about ordinary life, about the spirituality of the mundane, about practicing God’s presence in the quotidian of daily life. There are remarkable books about this, and many are anecdotal or experiential or in the genre of spirituality, I suppose. But this, this is a bit different and nothing short of brilliant. Quiet, but brilliant. A Theology of the Ordinary is less a spiritually or reflection and more a theology; not academic, but still. It is written by a woman with a PhD in theology who has written a stunning, academic book on John Calvin (Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension) but the impetus for the writing of this is part of the story. And it’s a great story.

Maybe you have heard of Godspeed which is a set of short films about an energetic, world-changing, zealous, young (very American) pastor who went to Scotland and learned to settle down, move slow, care for his people and place, become known — he learned to take up such calm and focused ministry not (only) by reading Eugene Peterson or the novel Love Big Be Well or Wendell Berry, but by walking alongside a sane, caring, parish pastor. Together with his wife — the aforementioned Julie Canlis — Matt was transformed to a new identity and pace of life and different sorts of affections. We stock the seven-week study guide to Godspeed, by the way, and would love to talk more about it.

But here, now, I want you to know of this precious small press (they’ve just done the short films, the study guide, and, yep, A Theology of the Ordinary. The book is handsomely made, classy, even though it is a thin, mass market size. The book came from three lectures she gave (at Whitworth College in Spokane, WA) after returning to the States after their experience in the UK and in those lectures she explored a Trinitarian theology to undergird the notion that our ordinary lives in God’s real world is, truly, the only place we have to see God work. Our Christian growth is, literally, down to Earth and does not have to be extraordinary.

Here’s how they tell the story:

Upon returning home to America, Julie Canlis was struck by the emphasis within Christian circles on being ‘extraordinary’ or ‘radical’ or ‘passionate’ for God. But what about the goodness (and challenge) of living our ‘normal’ lives for God? The joys and challenges of living an ordinary life in the presence of God gave rise to this little book, and is the lived theology behind what Godspeed is about

With an easy, conversational style, she writes about the blessing of the Father on ordinary life and creation and the inhabitation of the Son in ordinary life as the rule, not exception, for redemption and the ways the Spirit works in our ordinary lives to bring us into the new creation.

With each section, she also examines a ‘cultural temptation’ that threatens to undermine our ability to offer God our ordinary lives. The questions at the end of each chapter make this a fabulous book for small groups and book clubs. What a shame most readers — on the lookout for substantial, classy, thoughtful, approachable books — don’t know about it. You’re welcome.

Again, we noted the regular retail price. We’ll gladly deduct a 20% off for you on any orders. Just use the link to our bookstore order form page and tell us what you want.  Thanks for shopping small, supporting indie presses, and giving lesser known authors a chance.

Thanks for your patience, friends, as we’ve been a bit uneven with the BookNotes schedule this past month. With Beth’s head injury and some serious aches and pains, the death of my mom, and some other heartbreaking stuff, we’re still reeling. Yet, we find great solace and hope every time we get an order for a good book or two or three.

That people still read, that people of faith want to think and understand our glorious, broken world, that our bookstore staff and good customers carry on with vigor in these peculiar times says a lot. We rejoice that authors and artists do that thing that legendary sports writer Red Smith mentioned — just open a vein and let it bleed — and that publishers release their good prose and that customers actually want to buy real books from real bookstores. We thank you, gentle readers.

Which brings me to this: here are some highly anticipated, eagerly awaited, forthcoming books that you can PRE-ORDER from us now. We won’t run your credit card until the day we ship them out, of course, but you can fill out the order form page and get a 20% discount.

This stuff gives me hope and keeps us going.

(Of course you can pre-order anything from just — just tell us what you want. There are so many other great titles coming that it was difficult to suggest just these seven. We think this handful deserves advanced attention and with which we have an affinity, so wanted to suggest you get them —  and get them from us. Again, you can order anything, any time. We’re eager to serve. Tell us how we can help.)

Did I mention these aren’t out yet? But that you can PRE-ORDER them now at the link below? Here’s a thing: for several of these, we will have them (as an independent, bricks and mortar store) before the famous faceless behemoth. Unless they have an official release date where we’re not allowed to sell them early, we suspect we’ll have these as early as almost anybody. And on sale.

Allow us to introduce you to a few forthcoming books. A few of these we’ve read already in advanced manuscript editions. What fun.

Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon David Kinnaman & Mark Matlock (Baker) $21.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $17.59. For some in our audience, this will be a very important book as they have already read what might be seen as the first two in a trilogy co-authored by David Kinnaman. Whether you’ve read them or not, you most likely have heard of the Barna research and the books that came out about young adults who are not Christians and their views of the church (unChristian) or who have left the church of their youth (You Lost Me.) Both of those important books showed that churches of all sorts have a major problem in that many older teens and 20-something think the church is unhelpful and the gospel is irrelevant (or worse.) Those two books explain, in some detail, what the data suggests about how we in the churches have failed our young adults. In a nutshell, one might say those books diagnose the problem and feature (as they should) what we’re doing wrong.

This long-awaited third one in this series, Faith for Exiles, however, offers some practical (if at times visionary) notions based on the latest Barna studies about churches and ministries that have retained their young adults or ministries; Faith for Exiles examines programs and practices that have been successful and fruitful in effective ministry with that age group. For those that want guidance, ideas, suggestions, best practices, and solid stuff that works in doing ministry with young adults, Faith for Exiles is a must-read.

Further, because it spends some time in fascinating descriptions of our “digital Babylon” culture and what it means to live as exiles, Faith for Exiles is not just how to offer a faith that resonates with and equips the rising generation of emerging adults to have lasting faith, it is, I’d say, a book for rising adults, younger folks, college age students, those in their twenties or thirties who may wonder how to keep on keeping on.

Kinnaman’s co-author for this forthcoming volume is Mark Matlock who is the former Executive Director for Youth Specialities; as such, he’s written bunches of books for and about youth ministry and it is good to see him with this passion for David’s work in following up our youth who are often active in church camps or youth fellowships or teen ministries and mission trips and such, only to drift away in their college years. Together, Kinnaman and Matlock are quite a pair and this research is something all of us should know. It’s packed with stories, is nicely written, and loaded with good ideas. I highly recommend this book.

For what it’s worth — no, I’m not going to spoil it by trying to summarize all of it — they’ve documented five things that any viable young adult ministry or college-age outreach should include. Frankly, these are things that interest me, too, and if a church or ministry doesn’t do this stuff, it isn’t going to capture the imaginations of many of us (regardless of our age or generational cohort.) They share the five insights as key practices. For instance, one great chapter talks about holding out a vision for work and vocation so the practice is offered as “To ground and motivate an ambitious generation, train for vocational discipleship.”  Another practice is spelled out like this: “When isolation and mistrust are the norm, forge meaningful, intergenerational relationships.” Each practice counters a certain bit of data that they’ve come to realize is true for this generation, and each is accompanied by stores and examples. There is great hope here, for those who dare to have this God-sized dream of doing young adult ministry in a church that feels ill-equipped and is losing that cohort, and there is great hope for those who need to, as they put it, “develop muscles of cultural discernment” and who will “curb entitlement and self-centered tendencies.”

Faith for Exiles: 5 Ways for a New Generation to Follow Jesus in Digital Babylon by Kinnaman and Matlock is going to be a groundbreaking, clear-headed and helpful book. That it gives a shout-out to the CCOs legendary Jubilee Conference (and a nod to a bookstore from Dallastown that shows up every year to resource book-loving young Christians at that event!) makes it that much more fun for Hearts & Minds friends. It releases September 3, 2019. Pre-order it today!

What Is a Girl Worth? My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth About Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics Rachael Denhollander (Tyndale) $26.99  OUR SALE PRCE = $21.59.  We are proud to be able to promote this and trust that many other bookstores will champion this riveting, troubling and inspiring memoir of a Christian leader who has become an international hero. That she and her husband have gotten disgusting letters and social media harassment makes us want to try even harder to show off this fine Christian book. I has gotten some national attention already, received a starred review at Publishers Weekly and is going to be widely discussed. Beth Moore (herself a sexual abuse survivor) has recently said, “This is one of the most important books you’ll ever read.”

Here is  what is on the back cover:

“Who is going to tell these little girls that what was done to them matters? That they are seen and valued, that they are not alone and they are not unprotected?”

Rachael Denhollander’s voice was heard around the world when she spoke out to end the most shocking scandal in US gymnastics history. The first victim to publicly accuse Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor who abused hundreds of young athletes, Rachael now reveals her full story for the first time. How did Nassar get away with it for so long? How did Rachael and the other survivors finally stop him and bring him to justice? And how can we protect the vulnerable in our own families, churches, and communities?

What Is a Girl Worth? is the inspiring true story of Rachael’s journey from an idealistic young gymnast to a strong and determined woman who found the courage to raise her voice against evil, even when she thought the world might not listen.

This deeply personal and compelling narrative shines a spotlight on the physical and emotional impact of abuse, why so many survivors are reluctant to speak out, what it means to be believed, the extraordinary power of faith and forgiveness, and how we can learn to do what’s right in the moments that matter most.

Rachael Denhollander is a serious Christian, a mom of four, an attorney, and was named as one of Time magazines 100 Most Influential People, one of Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year and was a recipient of ESPN’s Arthur Ashe Courage Award. She has spoken within the faith community, too, in venues as prominent as Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and upon other significant platforms seeking to help us learn to be attentive to issues of abuse and how to be agents of justice in God’s broken world. It releases to the world on September 10, 2019.

By the way, we also have the soon to be released How Much Is a Little Girl Worth? a children’s book also written by Rachel Denhollander (and illustrated by Morgan Huff) released by Tyndale Kids! ($14.99; OUR SALE PRICE = $11.99.) It’s very nicely done. More on that later…

Listen to Karen Swallow Prior:

No two sexual abuse cases are exactly alike, yet Rachael Denhollander’s story reveals what they all have in common and the part we all can play in preventing abuse, defending the vulnerable, and pursuing justice. Sexual abuse does not take place only in dark alleys late at night. It occurs in brightly lit offices and in quiet church sanctuaries, in public spaces and in the privacy of homes. If you don’t understand how this can be, please read this book. If you know too well why this is, you have even more reason to read this book. Rachael writes with moral clarity grounded in biblical truth and love. What Is a Girl Worth? is a must-read for anyone who cares about protecting precious lives from predators and pursuing justice for those for whom we were too late. — Karen Swallow Prior, author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books and co-editor of the recent Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues 

Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times Os Guinness (IVP) $20.00 OUR SALE PRICE = $16.00. Those that know me know that one of my favorite books — and one we promote tirelessly — is The Call: Finding and Fulfilling God’s Purpose for Your Life, which was released last year in an anniversary edition, a bit more trim in size but with some editing, expansion, and a few new chapters. This book almost single-handedly help create a hunger within certain parts of North American evangelicalism to explore the long-neglected doctrine of calling, especially as it applies to ordinary folks. For too long only priests and nuns, ministers and missionaries, got to use the language of discerning and receiving a call to a particular vocation and Guinness explores how that de-formation happened, how a revitalization of Western culture depends upon a renewed focus on faith and calling, and how a “purpose driven life” is more, much more, than many have realized. Erudite and gracious, literary and beautifully informed by great stories from history (from the Greeks and Romans through to Winston Church and many modern folks, from Picasso to the great filmmaker who created Lawrence of Arabia and the curious jazzman Coltrane.) Guinness is well read and Biblically wise and The Call is simply a contemporary masterpiece, a book nearly everyone should read at least once in their lives.

Os has been a friend to me and Beth and always has much nice to say about our efforts here at the store. He’s a bookman and life-long learner and it is frightening to think where modern/classic evangelicalism would be without his thoughtful influence over these past forty years since his life-changing Dust of Death appeared in the early1970s. He has studied at Oxford and worked with Peter Berger. He has been a journalist with the BBC and helped draft the important Williamsburg Charter on religious freedom. His books have explored the nature of Christian persuasion, the idols of our postmodern times, doubt, the nature of evil, the role of the mind in Christian discipleship, the cultural captivity of the church, the threats facing American democracy and more.

Carpe Diem Redeemed is due in mid-to-late September, and is being touted as a long-awaited sequel to The Call. As you can tell from the title, it takes that popular phrase about “seizing the day” and asks fundamental and important questions (that, oddly, many of fail to ask) about what that means, and what it should mean for those committed to the Lordship of Christ. If God’s glory, pursued faithfully out of a Biblical world and life vision, is what drives us, then what do we mean by seizing the day? Why and how and what for? And as we redemptively find purpose and meaning by seizing the day, does that not demand of us a critical analysis of (and perhaps countercultural witness to) the society around us? We must, as the subtitle says, “Discern the times.” Such questions about how to discern the times and the point of a determined life, interestingly, have been wrestled with by the best thinkers down through the ages.

Carpe Diem Redeemed opens, as many of Guinness’s books do, with a few pages of remarkable quote from writers, philosophers, artists, political leaders, and historians who are as diverse as Lao Tzu, Horace, and Dante; Kierkegaard, Oscar Wilde, Vincent Van Gogh, on to Susan Sontang and Kurt Vonnegut, a tweet from Richard Branson and a line from Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue. From the ancients to the existentialists, they have written about seizing the day, using our time wisely. He reminds us that the most thoughtful and often the most successful leaders consider the nature of one of the biggest mysterious that shape cultures: their view of time.

Yes, in a way, this is a Christian reflection upon a perspective on time. Those familiar with Dr. Os’s body of work will know this has long intrigued him — the modern age, after all, evolved as clocks were invented and life was increasingly measured and scheduled and Os has regularly reminded us of the remarkable consequences of these sorts of things. Guinness even wrote a book called Prophetic Untimeliness about the idol of relevance, in which he explored with great insight some basic stuff about the nature of time, generations, history, and our daily experience of the passage of time and what it means to be up to date (or not.) A chapter of that book, in fact, is reprinted in this new one, giving it a helpful continuity to his previous cultural assessments, perhaps somewhat inspired by that famous poetry in the start of Ecclesiastes 3. One chapter hits hard, playing with an old social Darwinist phrase wondering if we live in a culture of “the survival of the fastest.”  What’s with the ubiquitous slogans like FOMO and YOLO?

So, yes, we must discern the nature of the fast-paced times, guarding against just going with the flow of history with too little sense of distinctiveness or holiness; trendy or thoughtless accommodation to the ethos of the times is rarely a healthy approach for God’s people. And, without getting into the thick weeds too much, to study our times, we have to study our era’s view of time. Yes, again, this is a book about time.

But more, it is about our own sense of calling, following up The Call and inviting readers to a 21st century sort of realization that we are — as people shaped by the vital notion of covenant — “singular, significant, and special.” An extraordinary chapter is called “The Way to Seize the Day” and that is followed up by this call to “prophetic untimeliness.” I’m telling you, this is good, good stuff — a bit deeper than The Call, perhaps, but just as inspiring. We would be pleased to have you sign up for one so we can send it out in a timely fashion. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) Carpe Diem Redeemed releases officially on September 24th but we’ll have it early. A new book by os Guinness is always worth celebration, and this one will be much discussed, I’m sure.

As a man in midlife, I am often reminded that like a piece of fruit or a loaf of bread, I, too, have an expiration date. With this awareness comes searching questions such as, ‘What’s it all for? Is there meaning to anything that I do, since it will one day all be forgotten? What does it mean to live well in light of such realities?’ In characteristic fashion, Os Guinness not only explores these searching questions but offers satisfying, proven answers to them. If you are asking similar questions―or even if you’re not―I can’t recommend this book to you highly enough.   — Scott Sauls, author of Befriend

Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice edited by Mae Elise Cannon & Andrea Smith (IVP Academic) $36.00  OUR SALE PRICE = $28.80. I know there are just dozens of wonderful, beautiful, powerful books on a Christian view of justice; Biblically-informed, deeply spiritual books to inspire us to care more about what God most cares about. God moved me to tears not long ago as I read out loud a few passages which link deep knowledge of the God of the Bible with the doing of justice and I was strangely warmed again, gladly. There was a time when one had to insist these verses were really in the Bible, so meager were most church people’s familiarity with the themes of justice in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. (I still return to Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger for a good overview.) Happily, we have moved deeper into the Biblical story these days and many of our best customers are looking for more detailed or more profound studies to equip them as agents of God’s peace and justice in this distorted, unfair world.

My friend Mae Cannon has done a few books that are staples in this aspect of discipleship, excellent and useful. See, for instance, her great collection of biographies in Just Spirituality: How Faith Practices Fuel Social Action (IVP; $17.00) or her very useful study resource Social Justice Handbook: Small Steps for a Better World (IVP; $25.00) or, reflecting her recent work, A Land Full of God: Christian Perspectives on the Holy Land (Cascade; $38.00.)

As much as we value these great books — write us if you need other suggestions, such as the soon to be released Bread for the Resistance: Forty Devotions for Justice People by Donna Barber (IVP; $15.00) — that guide us to be activists for the common good, to be just congregations, to be citizens for public justice, and such, we also think that some of us really ought to be studying how this recent development has actually occurred. What theologians, and what sort of theologies have funded this recent interest in social concerns amongst evangelicals? And in what ways have the late 20th century flurry of liberation theologies been adopted or refined by evangelicals (especially those on the margins, people of color, immigrants, people imprisoned, woman, and others.) Is there such a thing as an evangelical liberation theology? (If you are reading the book I raved so much about last month, Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire/Demanding Justice by Walsh & Keesmaat, you might be asking the same thing, more curious and open now than ever before.)

As it becomes increasingly clear that the Christian right has no theology at all anymore, and moderate evangelicals remain pietistic with a personalized faith with little public square commitments, what theological work needs to happen to serve a Bible-centered, Christ-honoring, historically orthodox foundation for liberation, reconciliation, peace, creation-care, freedom and justice? This is the big project that Mae Cannon and Andrea Smith has taken up, bringing together some older and newer voices and it is a major project. There are amazing pieces in this handbook/anthology called Evangelical Theologies of Liberation and Justice — serious chapters on body shame, on animal liberation, chapters by thinkers of various ethnicities and social locations on how their own status shapes their understand of the Biblical hope. Wow, this is a wild and generative compilation! Kudos to the women editors, of course, and to their evangelical publisher for doing this kind of serious work for the overturning of death-dealing idols and the flourishing of the common good. We hope to get this in very soon, but the official release day is September 10, 2019.

May It Be So: Forty Days with the Lord’s Prayer Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson (Waterbrook) $16.99  OUR SALE PRICE = $13.59.  I mentioned above that Dave Kinnaman describes the big Jubilee conference in Pittsburgh in his forthcoming Faith for Exiles. (He will be speaking there this February, so make plans now to attend! No matter where you live — come to Pittsburgh!) Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson are two friends who have spent their share of time hanging out in the big book room at Jubilee and, in between speaking and painting and praying and playing music there (they are a talented duo) they cooked up a plan to collaborate on a book which would serve as a prompt to pray. Not exactly a book about praying nor exactly a book of prayers. The readings are nearly like Zen koans, I’ve said, Justin’s allusive and mystical and generous ruminations inspired by Scott the Painter’s very hip graphic designs. I suppose I’m not sure what came first, the pictures or the text, but somehow, they created our of that Jubilee vision an imaginative, remarkably useful, and very popular Prayer: Forty Days of Practice (Waterbrook; $16.99.) This book is one of those rare ones that they self-published — what they called their “Jubilee baby” (conceived as it was, right there in their conversations at the conference) — and it was so hugely well respected that a mainstream publisher picked it up, issuing it in an affordable hardback. This doesn’t happen often, folks, so it is an indication that it was a a very special book.

That first one, and now this forthcoming one, are not for everyone, I suppose. The art is cool, but a bit unusual, blunt yet allusive. The writing is evocative and poetic. As they say, this book is a work of art, it is a work of love. We know many of our customers will love it.

May It Be So follows the artful pattern of Prayer: Forty Days of Practice but unpacks the possibilities of focused, imaginative prayerfulness around the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

“Deep down in every human being is a fundamental awareness of God and a desire for divine help in turbulent times,” it says on the back. “We instinctively long for relationship with God. Yet, a flourishing prayer life sometimes feels just beyond our reach.”  This book, it says, is designed to “help you gain spiritual clarity and maintain a meaningful and ongoing conversation with God.”

Can you contemplate your own life? Those whom you love?  Is God around and in and present there? Justin & Scott think so, and this invites you to experience it. It releases September 23, 2019 and it’s one we are not permitted to sell earlier.

If you are in central Pennsylvania, keep your eyes peeled here as we are hoping for a in-store bookstore visit from Justin as we do an East Coast book launch in late September. More on that soon. Stay tuned.

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real World Spirituality for Restless Hearts James K.A. Smith (Brazos Press) $24.99 OUR SALE PRICE = $19.99. With no disrespect for any of the other great authors and marvelous books coming out this fall, I think many in our circles will agree that this truly is one of the most highly anticipated and certainly will be one of the most significant spirituality books of the year. Those who followed Smith’s tour de force “Cultural Liturgies Project” comprising of three volumes (Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the Kingdom) or the one-volume, more accesible, You Are What You Love, you know of his affection for the great Saint Augustine from Northern Africa. Discipled by Ambrose on the mid-300s, Augustine became a Bishop, helping navigate the church’s role in a deteriorating Roman culture. How can those graciously swept up into the reign of God relate to the corrupt powers of this world?  What does it look like in a world falling apart to be “in but not of?” Despite huge foibles and flaws, Augustine’s City of God shaped much Christian public theology and cultural engagement for centuries.

Augustine, flawed and broken man that he was, didn’t get it all right. But what he is perhaps most known for — and why even the most secular universities sometimes assign his book Confessions — is because Confessions is considered the first memoir. Not a history book or even a biography, but a rumination on the shape and texture of a person’s interior life, it is penned with a self-awareness that was pioneering in its day. To consider one’s own deepest longings and desires and temptations and sins, to give voice to a quest for meaning and a reframing of one’s deepest sense of self — that’s all before the rise of a sense of the modern day self, before Freud, before evangelical testimonies, before all those modern day memoirs that I highlighted in a BookNotes column a month ago. Confessions was groundbreaking.

And so, Jamie Smith takes seriously the adage that is said to be Augustinian: if you want to know what somebody is really like, don’t ask so much what they believe, but what they love. That is the power of his best-selling You Are What You Love as it reminded both modern day evangelicals and classic mainline denominational folks that dogma and doctrine and even talk of the allusive worldview doesn’t change people’s lives. The center of gravity of the human person is the heart, not the brain, and we must re-oriented our loves, our passions, our affections, note merely try to change minds. And that, as he explains brilliantly in the “Cultural Liturgy” trio and in You Are What You Love, happens through stories. We are conscripted into stories of the good life (or what is said to be the good live), and that often happens through habits and rituals. I won’t re-iterate it now, but that’s why Smith thinks that our hopes to deepen our discipleship in ways that shape us into the sorts of Christians who can faithfully engage the issues of the day and reform the society must start in deep and thoughtful worship of the Triune God. We are what we love, after all.

Which brings us to this pretty obvious connection with that Saint from Northern Africa. Augustine’s Confessions (and other sermons and letters and books) help us get to this wholistic sort of faith, shaped by an interior life, a spirituality, if you will, that allows us to love our place, our world, and give our lives for the common good. Want a bigger picture, a better story? Do you agree with You Are What You Love that we are more than “brains on a stick” and therefore need a deeper, richer sort of life? Does your church maybe not offer that? Do you feel somehow alienated, even, from the culture and the church, maybe, as well? You need a road trip with Augustine.

As On the Road with Saint Augustine explains, this really is not a book about Saint Augustine. “In a way, it’s a book Augustine has written about each of us.” That is, Jamies suspects that Augustine knows far more about us than we might expect. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine and invites us to join him on this journey.

This puts it nicely:

Augustine is the patron saint of restless hearts — a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart’s true home and he can help us find our way.

This soon-to-be released master-work is (as you might guess from Smith) both learned and fun; aware of ancient insights, contemporary realities, and the pop culture voices who remind us of our current age. It is rigorous, to be sure, but lively, moving from Augustine and his ancient contemporaries to Jack Kerouac to Jay Z to Heidegger to AA meetings to Camus to the films of Wes Anderson and back to Sal Paradise. It’s a philosophical road trip as he takes us throughout Italy and offer glimpses of his own life, from Canada to Philadelphia, from Milan to Seattle.

If you want to know more to determine if this one you want to purchase, read this great story, “Restless on the Road” about the book in the Calvin College student newspaper, the Chimes. 

Or, watch this moving, evocative video trailer for the book.

On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts deserves to be taken seriously (and deserves a full review which I will attempt later.) For now, allow these remarkable early endorsements from such an array of thought and cultural leaders — Charles Taylor! A member of the Avett Brothers! Lauren Winner! — to illustrate how amazingly rich this forthcoming book truly is:

“This book is James K. A. Smith’s Born to Run. It’s the story of the journey we are all on. For Smith, Saint Augustine is the perfect navigator. He’s familiar with that ‘highway jammed with broken heroes’ because he knows what it feels like to be a heart on the run. If you lust for the highway and feel the engine idling deep inside, your ride is here. Augustine is in the passenger seat with the map of our heart unfolded on his lap, waiting to take us home.”
— Bob Crawford, member of The Avett Brothers and cohost of The Road to Now podcast

Broken We Kneel: Reflections on Faith and Citizenship (Second Edition) Diana Butler Bass (Church Publishing) $18.95 OUR SALE PRICE = $15.16.  Oh my, this will be a new, somewhat expanded edition of one of my all time favorite books by an author I deeply respect. It isn’t coming until mid-October but we are eager to alert folks that it is being re-issued. Kudos to our friends at the Epsiopalian publishing arm, Church Publishing, for giving this little volume a new life. And, boy, do we need it.

I wrote a lot about this book when it first came out as it captured much of my own dissatisfaction with an unholy alliance between church and state. It wasn’t just the far-out religious right, either: everywhere we went we heard the drums of war. I admired that Diana — a historian and sociologist with theological training and a congregational, parish educator — was willing to risk her job, perhaps her reputation within her own denomination, to speak out against this warring madness (as the old hymn puts it.) “Broken We Kneel” seems a more faithful and honest and profound and Christ-like slogan, doesn’t it? Broken We Kneel explored her own experience within a church that didn’t quite agree and what it means to adopt this posture of peacemaking and Christian identity. It is a memoir of her season coming to grips with this civil religion stuff but it is also a guide for all of us. The new edition will have some updated chapters showing how this question is as lively and contemporary as ever.

We’re sorry this edition of BookNotes was a bit delayed. Maybe you saw at the Hearts & Minds Bookstore Facebook page that Beth took a tumble while working at an off site gig (she lugs a lot of book boxes and is the packing queen, organizing the van) and suffered a pretty severe concussion. And then my mom, Betty Borger, rather unexpectedly died; we are almost too sad to think. She was 93 and used to work in the bookstore herself (behind the counter and, for a while, in our mail-out department.) She liked simple, religious novels, so in a way, this one goes out for her. Buy some books and smile!

Thanks to those who expressed appreciation for our last BookNotes on memoirs. I named dropped a bunch of older ones we’ve enjoyed or have sold well in the past and named 10 more recent releases for your own summer reading. If you missed that, we encourage you to scroll back at the BookNotes archives at our Hearts & Minds website and see my apologetic for reading memoirs, especially to widen your horizon and nurture empathy for other fallen people made in God’s image with whom we share the planet. What a great opportunity we have to experience the pleasures of good writing as we look over the shoulder, as it were, of folks narrating their lives, telling their story, showing us how they connected the dots (or don’t) of their life time. I’m a big van of memoir and the ones I mention in passing and the ones I actually reviewed might be helpful for you as you build your library, select books for your book club or reading group. We have heard that a few of these that customers have purchased from us have made their way into vacation suitcases, beach bags, and backpacks, even, for campers wanting a book to read by the trail or lake. How gratifying to get to fill those kinds of orders. Happy reading!

If reading memoirs is a fun way to see how good writers craft sentences as they tell (true) stories, then novelists give us a different kind of related, literary experience. Read mostly for entertainment and at our leisure, we glean so much from fiction. This is not the place to rehearse all that, but we have a whole section in the Dallastown shop which we call “books about books.” Serious literature criticism, memoirs about reading, and Christian arguments for reading widely abound. (I suppose you know we have often mentioned and featured Karen Swallow Prior’s lovely memoir of her own early years by way of the books she read, a great read called Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me and had her in the store last fall to do a presentation on her must-read book on character formation called On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books.

Our selection of novels in the store is large, but limited to what our mostly religious, York County customer base wants. I wish we had more robust sales of fiction and wish we had more room to display even more than we do. Besides lots of inspiring fiction published by Christian publishing house – their releases have changed a lot since my mom fell in love with the inspirational prairie novels of Janette Oke — we carry our share of New York Times fictional mega-best-sellers, like When Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and the new, layered, Elizabeth Gilbert novel City of Girls, set in the tawdry glamour of 1940s New York theatre district (which Beth liked, even though it was fairly graphic in its description of sexuality, a racy feature some will not appreciate.) We feature important ones, especially, such as Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered (which we both loved!) or the latest by award winning Moroccan-born, American novelist, Laila Lalami, The Other Americans, a crime novel revealing much about immigration, and, of course, the brand new (very, very heavy) The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, who wrote last year’s amazingly well done, Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Underground Railroad (which is now out in paperback.) None of us have read it yet, and it may be too gruesome for some tastes, but this NPR interview with Mr. Whitehead and a former resident of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida (where the book is mostly set) and an investigative journalist who has studied the despicable place for decades, will explain it’s importance. Unbelievable.

Do you know the work of Miriam Toews, a Canadian with a Mennonite past who writes socially engaged, serious fiction such as her recent Women Talking? It is about sexual abuse within strict Amish-like communities and gained some fame when none other than Margaret Atwood tweeted, “This amazing sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of Handmaid’s Tale.” Another writer called it “an astonishment, a volcano of a novel…” and Laura Van Den Berg says it is a “flawless, ferocious work of art.”

The last few years have seen some excellent books to widen our range of books by people of color such as Everything I Never Told You (by Celeste Ng) and Behold the Dreamers (by Imbolo Mbue) and the provocative There, There by Tommy Orange, a raw, creatively written contemporary story about urban Native Americans. I reviewed it here last summer, and it is now out in paperback. I’ll be you’ve never read anything like it!

Whenever I share a new list of new fiction, I feel a need to note that reading older novels is fine, too. Most who have read the most recent Virgil Wander (by Leif Enger) truly enjoyed it, even if it doesn’t surpass his phenomenally beloved Peace Like a River, which came out in 2001 and which you should definitely read.

Among our store’s perennially recommended ones include the novels of Wendell Berry (start with Jayber Crow or Hannah Coulter), Marilyn Robinson (read them in order, Gilead, Home, and Lila, and then jump back to her first, Homecoming, a very different sort of story offered in a few different sort of intense, creative prose.) For sheer joy and amazing writing and spectacularly curious stories, don’t miss The River Why and The Brothers K, by James David Duncan. One is about fishing, the other baseball; the first very funny, the second a lot of fun, but with a more painful plot. And pray that he gets the long-awaited next one done!) And I personally adore the early novels of Barbara Kingsolver, like Pigs in Heaven. You can read a few other favorites I’ve mentioned at BookNotes in the past HERE, HERE, or HERE or  HERE.

12 (mostly) NEW NOVELS – ALL ON SALE. 20% OFF.

ORDER NOW. PLEASE.

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Fallen Mountain Kimi Cunningham Grant (Amberjack Publishing) $14.99 We were alerted to this indie press book by a good friend of ours, a discerning reader and good writer herself who is a friend of the author. (Hey, Erica Young Reitz, we even saw how you are thanked in the acknowledgments for helping the author think through the ending.) Ms Grant is a central Pennsylvania native and attended Messiah College. She has won numerous poetry awards and received a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship grant, so is obviously a young writer to pay attention to. And she is, indeed, a good storyteller, has a way with words, and can craft good, good pages that draw out her characters. This slow, building plot set in the mountains of North Central PA.

I am drawn to stories set in small towns that honor the uniqueness’s of rural life, and Fallen Mountain, indeed, does. (There is a small subplot that is very realistic about how the fracking industry destroys woodlands and mountain streams in a way that many conservationists and hunters find dismaying. (Shades of the must-read Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction work, Amity and Prosperity.) Although Grant’s story isn’t overtly about environmental themes or a diatribe against fast-paced modernity, there is a small touch of Wendell Berry in her approach. The small town sheriff, wanting to retire, and his friendships with those who work a well-described local farm is pleasant and generous and, I suspect, plenty realistic. Anyone who likes the woods (hiking, hunting, or lumbering) will appreciate her good descriptions and the significant plot twist about protecting the land from, well… I don’t want to say too much. If you know the forests of Pennsylvania, you can imagine.

The plot revolves around a character who has disappeared, maybe murdered (or maybe not), so it is a bit of a mystery, with the twists and turns that sometimes accompany such a whodunit. But, more, like the best suspense stories, there is a deeper, more important project unfolding, that of exploring place and relationships, romance and regret, hard times and the search for some kind of meaning; redemption, even.

I can’t give too much away other than to suggest that Fallen Mountain is a fine early book by a rising author, a fascinating setting and plot, with lots to enjoy and lots to smile about and also some hard stuff which causes us to ponder much about this fallen world. Big hot shots from out of town figure as almost bad guys and there are good glimpses into hurts that arise from childhood bullying to opioid addictions, all very real issues in the lives of those in small towns where memories endure as people learn to live together over the longer haul of their lives. This book gives us an entertaining window into these daily dramas, follows the quandaries of a few key characters and brings home a captivating story with an ending that will leave you closing the book with satisfaction.

Light from Distant Stars Shawn Smucker (Baker) $14.99 I so badly want to explain what we like about this great new book, and have so much to say. Since the death of my mother, this book that opens in a funeral home and is largely about the relationship of a son and his deceased father, is more poignant for me than I knew when I started this review almost a month ago. I have carefully read this fascinating, entertaining, curious novel, written about it, erased it all, tried to re-write a better review, participated in a book release event party (sponsored by the author’s Lancaster friends The Row House Forum and Square Halo Gallery) and have pondered it over and over again. It means a lot to me this summer and we would be very happy if you ordered it from us so you can join in the buzz.

For starters, as we have said before, Shawn Smucker is a fine writer, a friend of Hearts & Minds, and a truly decent guy; he received great acclaim for two very well-written YA fantasy novels (The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There that we have highly recommended) and an inspiring (dare I say necessary) memoir Once We Were Strangers about his friendship with a Syrian refugee in his hometown of Lancaster, PA. He’s co-written a few biographies too, so has been honing his artful writing chops since his days as a lit major in the good program at Messiah College.

Light from Distant Stars is an apropos title as one of the characters in the story has a fascination with this notion that we see light that left their respective stars a million years ago; stars that perhaps now may be long gone from the galaxy. He doesn’t explore any didactic meaning to this fact, but it lingers, hanging in the air and as I reader I wondered why. It’s a moving metaphor, allusive and suggestion-rich (as Calvin Seerveld might put it) and hints at deeper things going on in this wild story.

Deeper things? How about Stranger Things? (I haven’t even seen that pop-culture TV phenomenon, but the lined worked. Ha.) This new book offers some pretty stranger things. It is set in a town (like Lancaster?) and rural areas nearby. The main character, Cohen Morah, works, unhappily, in his father’s undertaking business. (A fun aside: Shawn has told me he is a good friend with feisty funeral parlor owner and author Caleb Wilde, who he thanks in the acknowledgments. I hope you know his book Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life.) On the first page, Cohen’s father is dead on the floor of the embalming room and Cohen wonders if he killed him. So there’s that.

The book is not terribly gruesome, but as somewhat of a kinda murder mystery, there’s a tiny bit of disturbing description. Much of the book is set in flashback — stuff that happened a long time ago, that we’re just seeing now? – and Cohen’s father, an undertaker who used to be a preacher named Calvin, play baseball together. The beautiful description of young Cohen in a hot evening church service is captured wondrously and the domineering, cold, religious mother comes across painfully. Although it isn’t overly intense, there are shades of the likes of Pat Conroy or others who write about dysfunctional families here as Smucker explores the dissolution of a family and hints at the brokenness that ensues.

My family was healthy and safe and good (Beth and I both daily are grateful for the wholesome setting we were given by our decent, middle-class families and as we grieve the loss of my mom this week, we recall that intensely) but I was deeply moved by Smucker’s gentle explorations of a religious family broken in so many ways. Cohen’s good sister, his bitter mother, his father trying at another shot at redemption in his later years, his slow, lingering death in the hospital, all weave in and out of the story which is loaded with interesting plot turns, odd-ball characters (wait til you meet the mysterious street kids Than and Hippy) and includes moments of sheer genius.

That Cohen, during the long hospitable vigil, sneaks out at night, walking to a nearby Episcopal church to find a late-night priest to whom he can confess his sins, illustrates the plausible way faith – by which I guess I mean sin and redemption, fear and hope, trauma and healing, the search for resolution and the forging of meaning in memory and moving forward – is quite naturally woven into this story of darkness and light. And a story of light it is. Light amidst some very real darkness.

There’s a bit of surreal stuff that is a major part of the story as Light from Distant Stars slips into what the fancy-pants critics might call “magical realism.” That is, this isn’t a fantasy novel (there are no Hobbits or wizards or talking, Narnian-like creatures), not a supernatural thriller (although some might describe it that way since there are moments of mysterious spookiness) but there is some inexplicable weirdness (imagined or real?) with a bit of a blur between what is actual and what may not be. There is a force, a cloud, a Beast – think of the “smoke monster” from Lost — that soon enough we realize represents something utterly pernicious, something mentioned in only a passing paragraph but is achingly significant. A burning horror is in the book significantly, and it adds some gonzo oddness that, for me at least, was fun and captivating, making this more than a dour story of family sin and interior struggle. I am not a fan of this device, usually, but that damn thing came to intrigue me and kept me turning the pages, trying to figure out what the heck was going on.

Near the end there is another huge plot turn and a new character shows up – not his grumpy mother, not his healed-up sister, not his new priest friend, not his elementary school baseball playing girlfriend now turned detective, or his flashback dear, now dying, dad. It’s a kid in the hospital and I won’t give away what happens in this crazy episode, but it is a tad over the top. I liked it, and the images of how that whole thing plays out in what I assume is Lancaster General Hospital is the sort of rising action that made me almost stand up and cheer. I won’t spoil it – but, again, Light From… isn’t a ponderous or overly dour study of the human condition, but a great, entertaining read, full of plot and character and light and goodness and a batch of surprises that keeps coming and coming. Who thinks up stuff like this?

At the release party for Light from Distant Stars held at the Square Halo Gallery in downtown Lancaster, the articulate, profound, delightful, non-fiction writer Christie Purifoy (you must read her fabulous Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace) interviewed Smucker about his new novel. Christine read an excerpt from her book — gorgeous prose poetically delivered, about, well, about decay. (Okay, it was about homemade kombucha and sauerkraut.) Entropy, decay, death. Can we control such forces? Is there hope in the ruins? Her reading set up Shawn to talk soberly about his own book, and his own fascination with these things, about death and history and hope. In those moments, this spiffy thriller about smoke monsters and baseball and sinning pastors and reconciliation with stern mothers and careers and callings and confessions all took an even deeper turn, and I realized more of the genius of this fun, easy to read, (but well-crafted) curiously profound story. The late night confessions and hymn singing and deeply rendered loneliness spires downward and outward and light shows up, light that the Bible tells us reveals all. Light that John 1 tells us the darkness cannot overcome.

Whether you want a fast-paced and very entertaining thriller or an allusive reflection on families and regret, shame and healing, whether you want a murder mystery or a tender tale of death and birth, Light from Distant Stars is a great read, perfectly described by somebody as “eerie and enchanting.” I doubt if Smucker is considering a sequel, but I want to know more about Cohen Marah, his old friend Ava, his sister Kaye out near Philly, and maybe even the sexy Miss Flynne. And what the heck happens with Thatcher after, well, after that? 

The Overstory Richard Powers (Norton) $18.95 Good friends who read a lot of contemporary fiction kept telling about this and we watched as some smart customers bought it and it was increasingly mentioned on literary blogs and appeared on “best of” lists in newspapers and journals all over the country. This was before it won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Beth eagerly picked it up this Spring and found it to be one of the most beautifully crafted works she has read in ages. She has a good eye for good writing and was so taken by some passages she put little Post-it notes on certain pages to read them out loud, later. What writing! What an artful, respected piece of modern fiction.

I cannot say too much about the plot, but it is complex and fascinating. In the shortest of annotations we might say it is about trees. And about how in God’s creation the inter-working aspects of reality cohere. (Do trees really talk to each other as another best-seller has documented? Do they “clap their hands” as the Bible says?) In this novel, they indeed do, and more.

So, yes, what you may have heard, that this is a green, tree-hugger story, is true, but it is so much more. Although (Lord have mercy) we need to care about trees and climate change and environmental stuff, and be brave in protecting the Earth God gave us to care for, and maybe good fiction is the way to motivate us to care more. (It may be that that is increasingly the case, that a good story can be more persuasive and formative than several didactic lectures.)

Evangelical MD turned environmentalist Matthew Sleeth recently wrote Reforesting Faith: What Trees Can Teach Us About God and if you’re not up for Mr. Power’s strikingly imaginative story about trees, read Sleeth, first, and then read Overstory. Or, if you find the beauty and power of a fictional story about trees and greed and conflict and life and death to be deeply compelling, then read Power’s novel first, then the non-fiction Reforesting Faith next.) In any event Richard Powers is a gifted writer, an astonishing storyteller, and his drama is thick and engaging. It’s a beauty of a book.

I might add that The Overstory actually isn’t all about trees and saving the bioregion. One major character has a severe disability and finds it exceptionally difficult to navigate the material world, so he enters – vividly, with extraordinary detail – a parallel universe on line. Some of this big story raises questions about the reality of virtual reality, the experience of (and ethics of?) so-called digital culture. What is really real in this story of life we all live? This book is gorgeously done and surely unforgettable. Powers is, as he has been before in his other highly regarded novels, simply dazzling.

“Monumental…A gigantic fable of genuine truths.”

Barbara Kingsolver

“The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period.”

Ann Patchett

“This book is beyond special… it’s a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that id desperately needed.”

Bill McKibben

Shades of Light Sharon Garlough Brown IVP) $18.00 I have written about this before and a few interested customers were eager to pre-order it. We just got it into the store last week, a bit ahead of the scheduled mid-August release, and we’ve sent it out to those who have already ordered it. You may recall that I touted it as a realistic spiritual story that moved me, surprisingly so.

The author, Rev. Garlough Brown, is in real life an ordained clergywoman and a certified spiritual director near Grand Rapids who has written a series of easy-to-read Christian novels about the process of spiritual direction, with episodes of the stories unfolding in retreat centers, among folks struggling with spiritual disciplines, lingo drawn from, maybe, the sorts of folk who read Richard Rohr or walk the labyrinth, who are active church congregants, wanting a transformative, engaged spirituality, who maybe are learning about discerning God’s work in their lives day by day, learning the monastic practices of solitude and silence and are trying out the examen. Or they try to. These four “Sensible Shoes” novels (each published by IVP) are a delight because there isn’t much popular storytelling about those sorts of topics or characters who take up intentional spiritual practices.

Well, this new one is about an idealistic, young adult social worker, whose name is Wren, who is burned out and has a break-down, struggling, as we come to learn, with serious, clinical depression. Her Aunt Kit takes her in, offering a room in which to stay while she recovers. The room happens to be in Kit’s apartment in a contemplative retreat center where Kit works, and, slowly, the depressed Wren begins to heal by taking up a project of painting the stations of the cross for an upcoming Lenten retreat that Kit is running.

This plot turn makes perfect sense as much of the story revolves around Wren’s interest in art. Her passion for and knowledge about Vincent Van Gogh is significant; her conversations are peppered with quotes from Van Gogh (often from his beloved Letters to Theo, some of which are about his own religious and artistic struggles and his own deep inner demons.) She comments about this or that famous (or lesser known) painting of the legendary Dutch artist and it was so fun learning a bit about the great master in this tender, poignant story.

I am not sure I’ve read a novel quite like this before and I greatly appreciated the descriptions of Wren’s interior life and psychological condition. I appreciated her hard episodes with her disturbed (bi-polar?) friend, and resonated deeply, as any parent might, with the portions of the plot about the out-of-state parents who so badly wanted to help their hurting daughter, but did so mostly by keeping their distance. Some readers will appreciate that Hannah, a pastor from the earlier “Stepping Stones” stories, makes a brief appearance.

The Shades story unfolds from a variety of views and the redemptive message for those who suffer, or those who care for the suffering, is inspirational (without being overly simplistic.) There is a lot of “spirituality” God-talk that I often don’t appreciate in novels, but, it works well in Shades of Life as this female pastor, rooted in contemporary evangelical spirituality, trained in spiritual direction, naturally does have this gentle, hospitable demeanor and propensity to speak a certain way, even if some of it sounded a bit clichéd. It was, in fact, spot on. Her graciousness and gentle spirit reflects a certain sort of clergy and pastoral caregiver many of us know well, and Wren’s helpful expertise in Van Gogh’s work, rings true. What a pleasure (and help) to read a book about grief and God, about art and psychology, about social work and spirituality. Highly recommended.

By the way, for book groups, IVP has nicely published a little study guide booklet, too, that sells for $10.00.

My Dearest Dietrich: A Novel of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Lost Love Amanda Barratt (Kregel) $21.99 This is a brand new novel that I just had to mention even though we have not yet read it. There have been a few other authors brave enough to create a novel set in World War II era Germany, using that backdrop to explore, in fictional storytelling, what it might have been like to be romantically involved with Dietrich Bonhoeffer during the years of his underground seminary and resistance to National Socialism and Hitler. We have letters from him during those years of his imprisonment starting on February 7, 1945, the day after he turned 39 when he was transferred from his prison in Berlin to Buchenwald to Regensburg to Flossenburg.

Some of those previous historical fiction works were very well respected although a few were not so well done, not so accurate, and, perhaps, not so artful or interesting. My Dearest Dietrich is said to be very solid and it may stand in league with Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, the recent novelization by Patti Callahan about Joy Davidman that became a sensation last winter. Like that one, My Dearest Dietrich, follows the life of a brave and thoughtful woman who stands alongside a legendary Christian leader. Becoming Mrs. Lewis was fraught with the unforgettable story of Lewis marrying the smart, former Jewish atheist from America on her deathbed, and if that was gut-wrenching and made for a great read, My Dearest Dietrich is surely equally fraught. What a story this is — what one reviewer called “as beautiful as it is brave.” This isn’t a spoiler alert, really, since anyone who might be drawn to pick up this new historical fiction story surely knows that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed by the Third Reich in 1943.

Some may know that his relationship with Ms Maria Wedemeyer to whom he was engaged but did not marry, was itself complicated.

There is included in the story some of the actual correspondence of Bonhoeffer taken (naturally) from his famous Letters and Papers from Prison but also the lesser known Love Letters from Cell 92 by Bonhoeffer and Maria which was translated into English and released in the States in the early 1990s. I’m eager to see what this good storyteller does with this previously unexplored story, what one Christy Award winning author (Jamie Jo Wright) says is “a haunting love story with beautiful prose and picturesque descriptions” and what Jocelyn Green (of Between Two Shores) calls “a multifaceted story of the highest stakes and the deepest loves.”

Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens (Putnam) $26.00 I mentioned this in passing, above, as it has been riding at the top (or near the top) of all the standard best-seller lists and is hugely popular this summer. It has sold more than 2 million copies (in part due to its choice as a “Reese’s Book Club” selection. (That Reese Witherspoon has very good Southern taste, I must say!)

I will also say that it took me just a bit to “get into it”as they say. Perhaps the writing (the character’s speech, actually) will be appreciated like the famously difficult, if at times playful, black cadence found in the stunning, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, a beloved, unforgettable work, considered a great classic of American literature, despite (or because of) the demands it places upon the reader. In any event, Where the Crawdads Sing starts with this complicated vocabulary that (foolishly) I tried to read as some ancient, New Orleans/Cajun dialect. Soon enough, we learn that the young character is living in the land of palmettos in North Carolina, in a region having developed and maintained its own unique dialectic, in the American Southeast One reviewer says it is “steeped in the rhythms and shadows of the coastal marshes” and is “fierce and hauntingly beautiful.”

In what is in part a murder mystery and a story of grave injustices, Where the Crawdads Sing is also a gripping coming-of-age story, what Alexandra Fuller calls “a lush debut novel… her mystery wrapped in gorgeous, lyrical prose.” It has been called “astonishing” and “heartbreaking” and “ambitious, credible, and very timely.”

One of the things I liked was the good writing about the natural world – the marsh ecology, the herons, the slow, slow days of this child, Kya, living alone along the wetland shores of the Outer Banks. In that, it was very lovely.

The New York Times Book Review says that, “In her isolation that abandoned child makes us open our own eyes to the secret wonder – and dangers – of her private world.” We don’t know if many other religiously-oriented bookstores carry this kind of work, but we are happy to recommend it.

Southernmost Silas House (Algonquin Books) $15.95 This publisher is renowned for good, classy, meaty (Southern) stories, and this one just released in paperback – called “bracing, honest, and luminous” — is no exception. The fictional Asher Sharp is an evangelical preacher who is, as it says on the back cover, “willing to give up everything for what he believes in. Except his son.”

The writing is mature, highly literary, and, like Mr. House’s other important books of fiction, youth fiction, and non-fiction (he edited Something’s Rising, a book we carry about Appalachian folk resisting mountaintop removal) it is set in the South, including more or less a chase/road trip from the mountains of Tennessee through Kentucky and finally to colorful Key West, actually – hence, the title.) We saw a review of this when it first came out in hardback last year in Sojourners and realized it had profound insight about hopes and fears and struggles and faith and family, mostly revolving around the questions of religious allies of persons with same-sex attraction and the consequences of this pastor’s preaching about tolerance and his loyalty to his gay son. Recently, we saw a stellar review in The Englewood Review of Books from which a blurb is drawn and reprinted in the inside of Southernmost.

Many good writing and reading folks have endorsed this, from Southern and rural writers like Dorothy Allison and Charles Frazier and the lovely (and funny) Lee Smith, who ends her amazing review with these words:

“With its themes of acceptance and equality, Southernmost holds a special meaning for America right now, with relevance even beyond its memorable story.”

 

All Manner of Things Susie Finkbeiner (Revell) $15.99  I think the simple cover and the curious title (hasn’t that ever been used as a book title before?) first struck me, as did the imagination-capturing blurb from Jocelyn Green, a Christy Award-winning author of Between Two Shores, who wrote, “Some books are meant to be read. All Manner of Things is meant to be lived in.” If the characters are real and the story important, this quote is a huge invitation, eh?

This is the story of a young man who enlists in the Army in 1967 and, from Viet Nam, sends his sister, Annie Jacobson, the address of their long-estranged father. If anything were to happen in Nam, Mike wrote, Annie must reach out to their father.

Unexpectedly, the father returns and there are tragedies in this already tense time. There is grief and struggle, hardships and family stuff. For those of who lived in those hard if exciting times, stories like this could be healing and hopeful. That it is explicitly Christian will appeal to many.

You may recall how we touted The Solace of Water, a story set in central Pennsylvania that told of the friendship of an Amish woman and a black woman, united by grief, written by Elizabeth Byler Younts.  Ms Younts writes about All Manner of Things,

“With intimacy, a poetic voice, and an ever-present grip on hope, Finkbeiner writes with breathtaking admiration for the common American family in the throes of unbearable circumstances. Beautiful. Honest. Artfully written. A winning novel.”

The Most Fun We Ever Had Claire Lombardo (Doubleday) $28.95 Okay, I’ll admit it. I got this into our store mostly because I loved the cover. And I read a fabulous review. (But mostly the cover.) Some people just love holding this kind of a big, thick, novel — I recently ordered for myself another hardcover copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s splendid The Signature of All Things just because such a sprawling, epic, wondrous novel deserves a material heft in the hand to match the story. The Most Fun We Ever Had, a debut novel with amazing endorsements from the likes of Richard Russo and Affinity Konar, despite the cheery title, just seems to deserve this good, fat, 500 page volume. It’s apparently an ambitious, sprawling, multi-generational novel about the life-long friendship of four sisters and their respective families. The Guardian said it could be the “literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler.” Ha.

Advance praise has been significant and fun:

“A wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels…A deliciously absorbing novel wit–brace yourself-a tender and satisfyingly positive take on family.”
–NPR

“This juicy saga spans more than four decades…You’ll be glad this loopy family isn’t yours, but reading about them is a treat.”
–People Magazine

“A family epic…It resembles other sprawling midwestern family dramas, like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. The result is an affectionate, sharp, and eminently readable exploration of the challenges of love in its many forms.”
— Booklist

“Everything about this brilliant debut cuts deep: the humor, the wisdom, the pathos. Claire Lombardo writes like she’s been doing it for a hundred years, and like she’s been alive for a thousand.”
— Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers

“Lombardo’s impressive debut is a gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory. She juggles a huge cast of characters with seeming effortlessness, bringing each to life with humor, vividness and acute psychological insight.”
— Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe

“What a splendid, spacious, gripping novel Claire Lombardo has written. These pages sparkle with wit and wisdom. I love the four difficult Sorenson daughters, each in the grip of her own emergencies. The Most Fun We Ever Had is a gorgeous and profound debut.”
— Margot Livesey, author of Mercury

The Tubman Command Elizabeth Cobbs (Arcade) $25.99  If you follow serious historical fiction you may know of Cobbs for her best-selling novel, The Hamilton Affair. Here she offers a fictionalized account of a lesser known event in American history, the time in May 1863 when the demoralized Union Army (having suffered fresh losses at the Battle of Chancellorsville and Fort Sumter stood to taunt the American Navy) recruited a woman with the code-name Moses. You know this is the heroic (and by that time, hunted by the Confederates) Harriet Tubman.

The episode this novel recreates is one of the most daring and dangerous in all of the history of the Civil War. In Beaufort, South Carolina, Tubman plots an dramatic expedition behind enemy lines to liberate hundreds of bondsmen and to recruit them as soldiers. And you thought she just led the chillin’ North to safety.

This novel “tells the story of Tubman at the peak of her powers, when she devises one of the largest plantation raids of the Civil War.” Plantation raids? Who knew? Union General David Hunter places her in charge of a team of black scouts even though he’s skeptical of what one woman can accomplish. If you care about or enjoy learning about the Civil War at all, this is simply a must – it will blow you away!

What an adventure this book tells of: there are alligators, overseers, slave catchers, sharpshooters, and even some hostile Union soldiers, gunships, and men who simply didn’t believe in her abilities. Did you know Tubman was married? Her husband – who she has left to pursue her unbelievable calling in this crisis of American freedom struggles – figures in to the story as well. I’ve only started it, but I’m finding it exceptionally compelling, a real page-turner, human and humane and yet visionary and exciting. The Tubman Commands is extraordinary fiction.

Here are just a few of the colorful, persuasive, endorsing reviews:

“If you think you know all about Harriet Tubman, think again–this novel brings her alive as only fiction can. With a historian’s grasp of detail, Elizabeth Cobbs spins a gripping tale of romance, wartime spies, and daring escapes. The story of Harriet Tubman’s leadership of black troops behind enemy lines, The Tubman Command illuminates the unfathomable bravery of people fighting for liberty and the birth of a better nation. Harriet emerges from these pages as a brilliant strategist, master of psychology, and a fully-rounded woman whose legendary heroism has made her a cherished American icon.” –Kate Manning, author, My Notorious Life

“Cobbs is that rare writer who possesses both the uncanny eye of the historian and the dynamism of a natural storyteller. By the last chapter I was breathless and near tears, captivated by the true tale of one woman who railed against injustice and changed the course of history.” –Fiona Davis, national best-selling author of The Masterpiece

“A phenomenal piece of writing which humanizes one of America’s most beloved icons and shows a different side of a woman whom many think they already know.”– Edda L. Fields-Black, Author of ‘Combee’ Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid (forthcoming)

“Cobbs paints a vivid portrait of Tubman at the heart of one of the most innovative, daring, and dangerous missions of the Civil War. The heroic and brilliant Tubman is brought vividly to life as a flesh-and-blood woman and a strong and cunning leader in this compelling and instructive fictional tribute.” — Booklist

The Last Year of the War Susan Meissner (Berkley) $26.00 I wanted to list this since it is one Beth found very engaging and very entertaining. It is a beautifully poignant novel, with what one reviewer said “explores the complexities of love, friendship, and the fleeting truths of identity.” The prose is truly lovely, even if it highlights a dark aspect of our culture and a sad time in American history.

In this new novel Meissner tells of two older women who realize they are both still alive (in their 80s) and plan a reunion. You see, they met at a Texas interment camp that the USA ran for Japanese citizens and for German citizens during World War II. One, the German woman, whose name is Elise, is starting to get Alzheimer’s – she calls her condition “Agnes” – but she surely recalls her friendship with a Japanese woman who she met in the awful camp. Beth was struck by this story about Agnes (she read some of it out loud to me as we ourselves death with my own mother’s loss of memory) and how Elise (14 years old when her father, a second generation American citizen, was arrested for being a Nazi sympathizer) ended up meeting Mariko in the camp. This elegant story tells of the friendship of these two different women, how their lives evolved, and how they reunited in happy friendship near the end of their days.

Michael Gable, of the historical novel A Paris Agreement, says,

Powerful and at times chillingly contemporary, and it reminds us why we read historical fiction in the first place.

Piano Tide Kathleen Dean Moore (Counterpoint) $16.95  This is not a brand new novel, but we somehow had missed it, even though it was written by a memoirist and nature writer that I adore. I’ve read several of Moore’s beautiful non-fiction works (such as Pine Island Paradox and Holdfast and Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature.) Her recent polemic is important and passionate, called Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change. We stock them all, of course. I had completely missed that this philosophy professor and mom and ecologist and climate change activist had tried her hand at a novel. She’s such a good writer that I figured we should carry it.

I think we first learned of it when we heard that Ms Moore spoke at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing and then, again, came to the college to present a spoken word piece on climate change set to a moving classical piano composition (starting with a mournful bit by Rachmaninoff.) What a wonderful idea!

Knowing about this creative work by Kathleen Dean Moore, then, we certainly wanted to stock her novel. We’re happy to recommend it to you.  Beth read this one right away, and found it compelling; a rip-roaring read, funny and entertaining, all about the bad guys who are ruining the environment for a quick buck, the complexities of family loyalties, and a bit of a nifty romance. Set in the gorgeous timberlands of a remote Alaskan island with a greedy industrialist named Axel Hagerman as a protagonist, Piano Tide plays out with some very surprising twists. (You’ll see how the piano fits in, as it does.) It includes elegant descriptions of the landscape and social ecology of this distant place and yet has energy and subversive wit. (In this, it brings to mind the legendary Monkey Wrench Gang.) Oh my, what a nearly “Romeo & Juliet” this then becomes as the young adult children of two opposing players in the battle for the land fall in love and move into the very spot where the turmoil and flooding will happen. Whewie!

I suppose this could be considered a well-written morality tale and a spectacular telling of what could become a transformative act of resistance. We hope all of our fiction makes some sort of difference in your life, transformative, enjoyable — a great use of your funds. We wouldn’t say this if we didn’t truly believe it.  Books matter, reading stories can be great enjoyable, and, who knows, you might find some new insights, new vistas, new passions. Happy reading, one and all.  Thanks for caring.

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