First published 2012
Deanna Thompson teaches religion at a university when doctors deliver devastating news: stage IV cancer with a grim outlook. The diagnosis shatters her carefully constructed world. As a theologian, wife, mother, and daughter, she struggles to find language for her crumbling faith. Thompson refuses to craft a sanitized story of divine healing or miraculous recovery. Instead, she examines what happens when belief meets brutal reality. Her journey takes her beyond conventional prayer and church comfort into uncharted territory where hope becomes the only anchor. Thompson wrestles with fundamental questions about suffering, grace, and what remains when certainty disappears. Her search for adequate words to describe faltering faith becomes a raw exploration of how people survive when everything they trusted proves insufficient. The book follows her through cancer's valley without sentimentality or false promises, revealing how grace appears in unexpected places when traditional faith structures collapse.
Genres: christian, contemporary, religion, non-fiction, biography-memoir, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: raw-exploration, search-for-words
166 pages · ebook · Cascade Books
Content warnings: terminal-illness