Customer Reviews

Sweeping Up the Heart

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Paul Nisly was my main professor of English over 20 years ago. This book about the sudden accidental death of his teenaged daughter (and most likely the most vibrant member of his household during her life) was written quite a few years after I left the college at which Nisly teaches. Nisly is what I saw then as a "subjective intellectual": extremely intelligent, but also deeply sensitive and unwilling to ignore either gift, either perspective, on personal experience. His bravely retold passage through the experience of this vibrant young girl's death is like few things I have read in my life. It is one of few memoirs of its kind, combining a broad, Renaissance intellect with deep personal sensitivity--I am reminded of C.S. Lewis. I was lucky to have known and studied under Dr. Nisly. If you are a Christian or (and especially if) you are not, buy this book and enjoy it, learn from it. Its equal will be a very long time coming.

This is a record of the soul searching that the father of Janelle Nisly, Paul Nisly did after the unexpected death of his daughter 4 months after her graduation from college. In this, he stuggles with questions of suffering and why christians suffer. It lead me to tears, and it will do the same to you, even if you've never experienced such a traumatic experience.