Customer Reviews

Redeemed: Stumbling Toward God, Sanity, and the Peace That Passes AllUnderstanding

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I read REDEEMED all the way home on a flight from Alabama, and it was a book I hated to see end...I could pick it up and read it all over again. Reading Heather King's words is like having coffee with a best friend who listens, makes you laugh, think, and hope again. Her honesty is real and alive - and so her is capacity for joy and forgiveness. Her words make a person want to be better - to live better and more fully. I cannot recommend REDEEMED highly enough. It is a beautiful beautiful book of honesty and painful hilarity from husbands to sisters to awful people at work. It's just great. It even makes me want to forgive my idiot neighbor and his barking dogs and maybe even go back to church. I am very grateful that Heather King's books are in the world.

*****
I truly loved Heather King's new book, which was fun, funny, and touching all at the same time. I haven't been back to church in years but it made me want to go too. Just to experience community the way the author does, imperfectly, struggling, with love and humor and authenticity all bundled up together.

This book is also about being a writer, an alcoholic, and a human being. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. I would especially recommend it to those readers who are looking to have a less negative view of Christianity (this is me) and who want to read about faith from a gritty, grounded, and grace-based perspective.

It made me laugh and the beauty of the writing had me highlighting passages to refer back to later. It's an honest and real book about just being alive.

Highly recommended.
*****

Heather King's book is a gem for anybody looking for grace in their own lives. I am a cradle Catholic and to read about Heather's embrace of Catholicism and reverence for its attitude towards life and mystery was truly refreshing. She shares her own story, struggles, obsessions, and insights with her readers. After reading her book, I felt more connected, understood, and whole as a person and as a Catholic. Heather has a tremendous gift of radical honesty and an eye for humor in what seem to be dark situations. She has an intuition for grace and a wonderfully poetic way of seeing daily life and expressing its beauty. Redeemed is a wonderful book in which I found part of myself and part of God.

This is one of those books that came along just when I needed it. Heather King has a wonderful ability to make you laugh and think and just quiet down long enough to really hear someone else's perspective. You don't need to share her beliefs to be enriched by the honesty, humor and bravery, not to mention the beauty, of her writing. I've loved reading both of Heather's books, and I can't wait for more.

I loved King's first book, Parched, which documented her upbringing in a puritanical New England town, her young adult descent into alcoholism, and her struggle back to the light - literally, because this woman spent serious time in some of the darkest dives in Boston. Sounds depressing, but it isn't, because King's writing is filled with a rare hilarity and humility that make the book a joy to read.

In Redeemed, the reader gets to join King as she relocates to Los Angeles, specifically Koreatown, about as far as she could get from those cold and austere beginnings. As she struggles to make sense of her life, her career (a lawyer!), her marriage, and her physical and mental health, she finds a faith that grips her - and the reader - to the core. The contrast is both obvious and profound between the empty cross of her childhood church and the Catholic depiction of Christ on the cross, with wounded suffering on full display. Here King finds her home and her salvation, and we are all richer for sharing the ride. Highly recommended.

I think what makes this book such a rare gem is that it almost seems like two completely different types of books, or genres, eloquently and unapologetically mixed into one. Most simply put it is a women's story of the almost accidental discovery of her faith or relationship with God. However, it is such an honest and hilarious account of her journey that you find yourself routing for her the way you do some kind of great anti-hero protagonist from your favorite novel instead of just reading a memoir. Most spiritual books take themselves seriously, but when Heather King finds God (and naturally herself as well in the process) she finds him while making dry, witty, sarcastic remarks under her breath. She not only admits to being lost but celebrates it with grace in a way that only someone who has done their spiritual homework can. Long story short, it's just as funny and serious and engrossing as the last best novel you read, but when you finish it the book sticks with you and as a result, your own faith that maybe there is hope for the rest of us is restored a little.

Something all lapsed Catholics love to do at any opportunity is to slam the church, and anything dimly related to it. We have a kind of secret club.....and anyone can belong..... particularly if you went to Catholic school and ever had a nun or priest smack you or send you to the 'cloak room' to sit out a punishment for some trivial childhood offense. So it was with hesitation that I started reading Heather King's new book 'Redeemed'. I'd loved 'Parched', and consider her a brilliant writer, but this was going a bit far. Clearly this new book wouldn't contain the zany antics of a drunk Heather King, clawing her way through a haze of booze-soaked misadventures to ultimately sober up and become the funny sensitive woman I came to love in the first book. I must say though, this book is probably the only secular religious tome ever written. I don't know how King managed to convince me so gracefully that she had found in Catholicism another level of spiritual peace very much like her previous miracle of sobriety. I guess that's what really grabbed me about this book. It's all about miracles. Now, THERE'S something I can sink my teeth into! Catholic, Jew, Hindu, Atheist, Anyone....will relate to this very human phenonenon of finding something larger than themselves to lend purpose and freedom to a life that would be rather empty without it. Loved the book....you will too.

In "Redeemed," NPR commentator and Catholic author Heather King offers us a deeply personal and revealing story of her journey from darkness to light, from the edge of death to joy. King's childhood included Sundays at the Congregational Church; her experience with God and religion taught her "to be good" and "He won't hurt you." With time, she grew up not believing in much of anything and stood against God in general and all churches on principle. She avoided God and until age 34, her life consisted of dark barrooms, chain smoking, and men - a life filled with depression, loneliness, boredom, and anxiety.

Then, one day, while in Nashville, she had an experience that caused her to fall to her knees and feel repentance, "the Prodigal Daughter returning home." While the book is filled with each step of the process, she brilliantly shares her inner self, her humanness, and insights revealed on her journey, including:

* God - those who do not believe in God are very invested in how smart they are
* Christ - came to address the deepest mystery of humankind - the mystery of suffering
* the Eucharist - if we do not come through Christ, in contact with Him - which is the reality of my broken self, and my broken brothers and sisters -then we will miss the greatest gift He left for us
* the Catholic Church - previously, Catholicism was unthinkable, taboo
* the Virgin Mary - gave her life completely to serve God
* sex - sacred
* the human body - a temple
* abortion - a terrible wound to the Mystical Body of Christ as a result of deep spiritual poverty
* addiction - a symptom of a soul divided deeply against itself: of mental, emotional, and, above all, spiritual conflict

And there is much more...Each section is rich with reflections that can only come from the soul of a person who has wrestled with his/her demons. "Redeemed" is deep, and as I learned, not a quick read. King has packed too much meat and potatoes in this great book - consume it over time and relish its savor. She now has had the experience of God and reminds us that God walks among us so simply that many refuse to believe it; He so fulfills our deepest yearning we're blind to the fact that it actually has been fulfilled.

Redemption can come by opening our hearts and minds to God, who through Christ, has pitched His tent in our midst.

This book is a logical followup to Parched by Ms. King. Her sense of humor comes through at all times and even though I have never met Heather I feel she's a good friend. Along with the bumps and bruises in life she has obviously acquired a lot of knowledge. Books like this one give me faith in mankind and help me get through another day. Thank you Heather King and someday I hope we can meet!!

I so enjoy how Ms. King puts sentences together. Her writing carries you along with its conversational tone, where the asides and comma-enclosed phrases bring not only nuance and depth to the greater point being made, but make the reading process itself almost a joyride. There's hardly a sentence that isn't thought- or smile-, chuckle-, outright laugh-provoking. There are lots of smart, poignant, witty writers out there, but King's slant is unusual. I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to see the world though her eyes.