There deep in the text, you discover secrets that only readers know. You connect, not just intellectually, but viscerally, tuned in to the heart. In reading an entire book, you spend some 15-20 hours or more listening, interacting with the ideas. If you are a reader (and I presume you are if you are reading this reflection), then you understand that authors become our friends. With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays that ask candid questions about the stories we’ve been told-and the stories we tell-about our faith, our selves, and our world.Īs I listened, it came to me: Rachel is Christianity’s contemporary Queen of Hearts. Rachel Held Evans is widely recognized for her theologically astute, profoundly honest, and beautifully personal books, which have guided, instructed, edified, and shaped Christians as they seek to live out a just and loving faith.Īt the time of her tragic death in 2019, Rachel was working on a new book about wholeheartedness. What readers will find in these pages was someone deeply human: funny, irreverent, curious, wise, forgiving, nonjudgmental.” – The Washington PostĪ new collection of original writings by Rachel Held Evans, whose reflections on faith and life continue to encourage, challenge, and influence. I could not help but notice the poetry in Evans’s prose. “Evans died at 37, but a beautiful new book captures her brave outlook.

Monkey town rachel held evans