You are cordially and energetically invited to join us online at two virtual webinars, on two consecutive Monday evenings, with two exceptional conversation partners who are great authors, each with loads of experience in the publishing world.

I can hardly tell you how privileged Beth and I feel to get to host both of these friends (one a long-time pal, the other a more recent acquaintance who many of us feel we somewhat know due to her many best-selling books.) This is a bookseller’s dream come true, getting to chat with not one, but two great writers, both respected for their lives well lived and their literary craft. Two different events, two consecutive Monday nights (Eastern Time.)

First, we will host Jeff Crosby talking about his new book published by Paraclete Press, World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading on MONDAY NIGHT OCTOBER 20th at 8:00 PM – EST. You can sign up and register for free right here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_BLur4CX5Qa-2c8aJ_YZpQw#/registration

(Once you register there you will then be sent an emailed link to join in the fun that night.)

Then we will host Kathleen Norris talking about her new book published by InterVarsity Press, Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love on MONDAY NIGHT OCTOBER 27th at 8:00 PM – EST.  You can sign up for that free event here:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7aNJeWmEQhGMZmUx93sJ_w#/registration

(Again, once you enter your name and email there you will then be sent a link to use in order to join in that night for that event.)

Got that? Two different free events, two different links to click, and for each one you will need to pre-register (please, please do.) That will then generate an auto-email to you giving you a link to view the program at the appropriate time in your particular time zone. Makes sense?  Call the shop at 717-246-333 if you want more info.

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Here is my more extended pitch as to why these two separate events are going to be so very special for us and why we think you should try hard to join us. And if you really, really can’t, at least send us an order for the books (as some of you already have.)

As Hearts & Minds endures the usual struggles of those in the bookstore biz, we are often discouraged — I don’t have to rehash the obvious about how publishers and authors [especially in the overtly religious subculture] often promote a not-to-be-named big-time and verifiably corrupt super-sized amazonian outfit while those of us with a passion for real books curated by real bookstores are left just eking out a living. It’s demoralizing.

So when truly decent people who are world-class writers come forward, expressing a desire to partner with us to promote their work, it is more than a happy occasion, but a notable vote of confidence and a glorious bit of encouragement. So we’re blessed and delighted and want you to join with us to celebrate our indie bookstore moments with these two fine authors

But more, and more importantly, when authors like Jeff and Kathleen offer their considerable talents to show up for folks, they serve you — their readers — and this is really what it is all about. We get to midwife a magic moment or two when you get to meet (and even type questions to) real authors with beautiful books. So we hope this inspires you, gentle reader (and Hearts & Minds friend.) This is for you.

I suspect if you listen deeply to your own internal dialogue these days, given your hectic pace and longing for a bit of sanity these crazy days, you know this will be good for you, a fun hour or so to be inspired by folks with good stuff to say. We can’t wait to introduce you to our friends, Jeff Crosby and Kathleen Norris, as they talk books and faith and writing and reading. Beth and I hope you can make both events (or at least one of them.) It’s going to be a blast and we all will be better for it, I’m sure.

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Jeff Crosby is a guy with a resume a mile long and almost all of it in the book industry. I’ll let him tell his colorful story when we chat on the 20th but he has worked as a clerk in a store and with the largest distribution warehouse for wholesale book buying; he has worked in a very significant way for a significant publisher and now is the Director of ECPA (Evangelical Christian Publisher Association.) We were emailing the other day (about a book he is currently writing for an academic publisher on the spirituality of music) and he had to run as he was involved in an awards ceremony for contemporary Christian fiction. He’s a busy guy who has really been around (and has fabulously wide reading habits, and knows everybody) and we admire him more than anyone in our industry. And, yes, he has visited Hearts & Minds and is a customer (although he is equally supportive of an array of other indie stores, secular and Christian, across the country.)

Which is just one reason why he seemed born to write this most recent work, World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading recently released by Paraclete Press ($18.99 // OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $15.19.) As I have said when I highlighted it at BookNotes before, it is an absolute delight, charming and inviting, enthusiastic and interesting, accessible and informative. It isn’t a heavy theology or mystical spirituality, really, but it does show the deeply religious influence that books can have. If you are a book lover you’ll simply adore this great read. If you are less than inspired by the printed page, you’ll find this just the shot in the arm you need to pursue the reading life with greater gusto and joy. He is a guide, a sherpa, a mentor, a wise and experienced friend, reminding you of so much and showing just how it’s done.

World of Wonder has a handful of chapters — on reading Scripture, reading poetry, reading widely from diverse authors, reading fiction, and more. At the end of each chapter he has another wise practitioner chime in, offering their particular take on the topic at hand. That he wanted this book to be a bit collaborative not only speaks to his generous spirit but reminds us that reading is subject and idiosyncratic. Not everybody has the same tastes or needs the same sort of book in their hand at any given time. Offering other voices from other rooms brings the urgency of the task to light in a fresh and fun way. And he has some really good people as part of this project. Hooray.

(If your interested, I chatted a bit about the book in a previous “Three Books from Hearts & Minds” podcast a month ago. Check that out at Spotify or Apple Podcasts or watch on YouTube.)

Join us on Monday October 20th at 8:00 Eastern Standard Time (that would be 7:00 pm Central Time, etc.) for “An Evening with Jeff Crosby.” Just register at the link above and you’ll get a reply with a link to join us live. Don’t worry, your own picture will not be seen, so you can come over dinner or while in your jammies. You’ll be able to send us questions or comments and depending on time, we’ll try to let Jeff reply. No doubt, I’ll chime in as well.

Jeff Crosby is also the author of the wonderful book The Language of the Soul: Meeting God in the Longings of Our Hearts (Broadleaf Books; $26.99 // OUR SALE PRICE = $21.59.) It is the sort of book about spiritual formation that is at once contemplative and quotidian. That is, he really does help folks understand their deepest desires and longings and how God shows up in the middle of these real-life hopes and dreams in our ordinary, daily lives. It is gentle, full of stories, delightfully written and, without seeming heavy-handed or overly dense, truly profound. We raved about it at BookNotes when it first came out and named it a favorite book of 2023.

Please help us spread the word about this upcoming Monday night conversation about the role of books in our lives and the value — for anyone, of course, but particularly for those who are followers of Jesus — of reading widely.  We are grateful for this opportunity to serve you, our friends and customers, by putting this little online gig together. Join us, please.

And order World of Wonders now at 20% off. The order link to our secure order form is at the very bottom of this column.

Again, click on the link shown above (or HERE ) to join this online Hearts & Minds event, an Evening with Jeff Crosby, author of World of Wonders: A Spirituality of Reading. Monday, October 20, 2025 at 8:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time.)

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One week after our conversation with publishing hero and passionate reader and author of the new World of Wonders we have, as noted above, the well-known and highly regarded memoirist and writer and poet, Kathleen Norris. During our “Evening with Kathleen Norris” she will discuss (among other things) her new, most personal memoir, yet, Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love (IVP; $25.99 // OUR 20% OFF SALE PRICE = $20.79.)

I mentioned that we were hosting an online conversation with her to a customer (himself an author) the other day and he happily exclaimed “Oh my!” Those in the know realize what a big deal this is.

Norris became a New York Times bestselling author decades ago when, as a poet in the early 1990s she wrote a tender memoir about moving to Lemmon, North Dakota, entitled Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. A sublime reflection on the rugged Great Plains and her neighbors (in a “town so small the poets and ministers had to hang out together”) its fame didn’t deter her from her rural life. In fact, when she, as a Protestant, was drawn to Benedictine spirituality she wrote a truly remarkable, even stunning book called The Cloister Walk which remains, in my view at least, a modern spiritual classic. She followed with a fascinating look at her college years and then the serious work — her hardest, she told me — Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life.

Maybe her most beloved book is the pocket sized The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women’s Work, an eloquent look at the spirituality of the mundane, an ordinary sort of down-to-Earth embodied faith where there are “sanctifying possibilities” every day. It was a lecture delivered at a Catholic women’s college in 1997 and is good for anyone, anytime.

In all of these books she speaks of historic Christian faith in profound and yet approachable ways, being a pray-er, yes, who often sits in silence, but always a curious learner and creative poet (and film aficionado.) She has been likened to a rather contemplative Frederick Buechner (even before she wrote the fabulous alphabetical Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith; they both know their English literature, both were Presbyterian, both applauded as thoughtful people of faith by the mainstream, secular press.)

We get to talk with her for an hour or so at 8:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time) on the last Monday of the month, October 27th. Please pre-register so you can join us online and bring your questions!

The recent book is compelling and truly fascinating, published in hardback by InterVarsity Press. Again, it is called Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love.

I simply could not put down this riveting book. It is not as notably luminous as some of her other poetic writing but what it may lack in descriptive creative nonfiction tone it more than pays off in poignancies, tenderness, and really important insight. It is a no-nonsense, intelligent recollection of living with a mentally handicapped (and, we eventually learn, narcissistic and bi-polar) younger sister. Becky, as Kathleen calls her, knew she had experienced brain injury at birth and was unable to live on her own. She was colorful and creative and feisty; she was self-centered and giving, artful and smart, wise and intellectually what they used to call “slow.”  She was jealous about Kathleen’s literary fame and religious stature. More than once she said “you should write a book about me and that way I could be famous, too.”

This book, Rebecca Sue, is Kathleen making good on that promise made so many decades ago. It is a book she obviously had been writing most of her life.

(As we will surely discuss, though, a lot of serious research and reckoning goes into a project like this. She interviewed former caregivers, requested medical records, saw the notes written in the hands of doctors and psychiatrists. There were police records, too. She has the long lists of drugs — some things never change —as Rebecca was dosed and dosed. She dug up old journals and boxes of letters. Some of it caused her to break down and sob.)

Kathleen and her siblings moved around a bit when the kids were young (her father was in the Navy band and there is some lovely stuff about him in the story, and certainly her mother as well.) They finally settled in Honolulu, although Kathleen soon left, famously attending Bennington College in 1965 (about which she wrote in The Virgin at Bennington.) She got the writing bug, became a published poet, and worked (naturally) in New York City.

In those years Rebecca Sue and Kathleen were nearly daily pen-pals, corresponding regularly and talking on the phone — we called it “long distance” back then — quite often. We learn about Rebecca’s rather immature boy-crazy style, and, more deeply, her longing to be fully loved (beyond the extraordinary love and support offered by her family.) There are awkward episodes of romance, obsession, gratuitous sexuality, too much drinking, gross abuse. (It isn’t vividly portrayed, but gut-wrenching to remember that some guys would literally take advantage of an obviously mentally challenged young woman.) The obstacles of independent living for dear Becky were almost everywhere. That this emotionally volatile woman would soon take a liking to Kathleen’s husband, himself a poet, was a great blessing and a blessed example of a common grace in their lives.

We learn much in Rebecca Sue and, as in any good memoir, we are taken in by the narrative of the author’s life just like in a novel. This is a collection of stories, impressions, remembrances, and the plot deepens as Becky navigates romances and schools, group homes, sheltered workshops, poor-paying jobs, and a ever-growing avalanche of medical issues, hospitalizations, social service agencies, and the complex arena where physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual challenges collide. Of course she worried as her own parents aged.  I’d say Kathleen had a front row seat to all the drama, but she was not an observer but a participant.

The lovely text we are given, Rebecca Sue is about Becky, born in 1954 in Bethesda MD with perinatal hypoxia, raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. She lived quite a life in her 60 years.

But it is also about Kathleen herself and what she learned — sometimes the hard way — from her disabled, troubled, and often-ill sister. It is her most intimate book, yet. It is about faith and love and forgiveness and grace and grit and family and sorrow and art. I think it is, in a way, about all of us.

Publishers Weekly did a great interview with Kathleen Norris about the new book. She was asked that standard question what she hopes readers will discover in the book:

I hope that readers will encounter my sister as a full person who refused to let her disabilities define her. It strikes me that my sister’s transformation from a self-absorbed person to one who genuinely cared about others is, in a sense, the normal transition we all make from adolescence to adulthood. For my sister, narcissism was a good defense mechanism, a useful and maybe even necessary protection that served her well for years. When she finally began to shed it and take more interest in other people, it was a revelation.

But Becky wore her narcissism so transparently that it was easy to forgive her. When I once tried to tell her about something good that had recently happened to me, she interrupted me with an emphatic, “No! I go first! My story is more important than yours!” I hope readers will be able to laugh at themselves as they hear Becky say out loud what many feel but prefer to keep hidden.

Our online “An Evening with Kathleen Norris” event on 10-27-25 is going to be a marvelous opportunity for all of us to learn from Kathleen as she tells us about what she deems a fairly ordinary family learning to love each other well, or at least the best they can. It will be about the writing life, about memory, about God and grace. It is a way for all of us to meet her late sister, Rebecca Sue.  And it will, I assume, offer a healthy bit of encouragement to those in the disabled community, or the broader community of loved ones and caregivers and friends of the disabled or mentally ill.

Could you please tell anyone you know who might find such a conversation valuable about this online event? My hunch is that we all know someone who is caregiving for a handicapped or chronically ill loved one. (Some of them might even be thinking of writing a book!) In any case, we invite them to this conversation, confident that it will be an inspiring time. The book is captivating, and Kathleen is a born storyteller. It’s going to be good.

Again, please join us for this online webinar, Monday night, October 27,2025, “An Evening with Kathleen Norris.” We’ll start at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. You have to pre-register online; when you sign up you’ll get a link to join in. REGISTER HERE. 

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