From Publishers Weekly
In her previous memoir,
Parched, King wrote about two decades of squandering my talents, sleeping around, smoking cigarettes, and swilling Sea Breezes at 8 a.m. in Sullivan's Tap, saving her conversion to Catholicism for the epilogue. Here she looks at what she considers the more interesting part of her story (nothing is more boring than degradation)—her everyday life without alcohol, with God and yet still full of struggle and pain. Sometimes I think anyone as drawn as I am to suffering would have had to become a Catholic, she writes. The book starts off as straight memoir: sobriety, frustration, attraction, conversion. In the fifth chapter, however, she shifts to topical essays with a pronounced theological bent. King, familiar to many from her commentaries on NPR's
All Things Considered, maintains her signature self-deprecatory humor throughout, at the same time offering readers plenty to chew on as she reflects on her father's death, her bout with breast cancer, the end of her marriage, the importance of humility and the inevitability of loneliness. Though suffering is a constant theme, King's faith sees beyond the pain: heaven is not some other world, but shot all through the broken world where we already live.
(Feb. 18) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Review
“This memoir deserves to be as popular as Elizabeth Gilbert’s best- selling
Eat, Pray, Love.”
—
The Boston Globe “Rather than offering easy epiphanies and candy-coated narratives, King’s book is as honest and raw as the model of the spiritual memoir, the “Confessions” of St. Augustine….To witness someone of such emotional dexterity and moral depth struggle is moving and instructive….King is nonjudgmental, generous and insightful about the spiritual journey.”
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Los Angeles Times “A story with depth, rare balance, humor, and with a near-perfect eye for what is important, true to the perception that ‘sin, degradation, and scandal aren’t that interesting,’ but ‘conversion is.’” A conversion story along the lines of St. Augustine’s classic. You’ll learn how grace works.”
—Ron Rolheiser, author of
The Holy Longing and
The Restless Heart “This is really the story of two callings—to faith and to a life’s work…a riveting depiction of a lost soul found”
—
Kirkus “I’m hugely grateful for this ‘misfit,’ and for her words, which I keep copying down into my own misfit notebook. In hard times, Heather King is one of the people of hope.”
—Jean Valentine, National Book Award-winning author of
Door in the Mountain “In its structure and purpose, Heather King’s
Redeemed is not unlike St. Augustine’s
Confessions. That first Christian conversion narrative, often misconstrued as being an acknowledgment of past sins, is really a confession of faith in God and the luminous praise of a grateful heart. Similarly, in this well-written, insightful and funny book, Heather King, a frequent commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” does not deny her hard life….Rather, she writes an eloquent hymn of gratitude and wonder for her Catholic life.”
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National Catholic Reporter “King writes from the heart.”
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Rocky Mountain News “A must-read for anyone on the spiritual journey that defines the essence of learning to live life on life’s terms, while there’s still time.”
—William Cope Moyers, author of
Broken "A brutally honest, moving and heartfelt memoir."
—
America, The National Catholic Weekly
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
