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★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read
the words of this fine author and observer.”
Read more.
Wrestling with God
Stories of Doubt and Faith
By Barbara Falconer Newhall
(Blackberry Canyon Press)
A multi-faith book for a multi-faith world
“With 'Wrestling with God,' I’m asking the seekers, believers and doubters of the world to take a minute to talk to one another, to listen to one another.
It’s what our globalized, strife-ridden world needs right now.”
—Barbara Falconer Newhall
A JOURNALIST ASKS THE BIG QUESTIONS
Journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall is a hopeful skeptic whose moods jostle between doubting, seeking, hoping, believing — and back to doubting. Turning to her fellow seekers for help, she discovers that the divine is close by — in the lives of the people who share their stories with her. They include:
- • An atheist who conducts an experiment on God
- • A Congregationalist minister who questions God's goodness
- • A Buddhist monk who bows his way up the Pacific Coast
- • A Black preacher whose life is saved by a floating mattress
- • A Holocaust survivor who has one deep regret
With a foreword by Don Lattin, award-winning author of books on American religion and spirituality, including God on Psychdelics and The Harvard Psychedelic Club
About Barbara Falconer Newhall
BARBARA FALCONER NEWHALL is an essayist, humorist and former staff writer at Good Housekeeping, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and the Contra Costa Times. Wrestling with God (Blackberry Canyon Press) was inspired by Newhall's time as the religion reporter at the Contra Costa Times, where she discovered the richness of the American religious landscape. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Newhall's weekly Riffs on Life essays explore the meaning — and sometimes the humor — in what life throws her way as a mother, grandmother, widow and citizen of Planet Earth. You can find her essays at barbarafalconernewhall.com
Follow Barbara:
Facebook: @BarbaraFalconerNewhallWriter
Instagram: @BarbaraFNewhall
About Wrestling with God
As the religion reporter on a large suburban newspaper Barbara Falconer Newhall was meeting Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, evangelical Christians, mainline Christians, atheists — people of radically differing and seemingly discordant world views — all living within a few freeway exits of one another.
“I wanted these folks to discover how much they had in common. So I put them together in a book, where I hoped they would listen — really listen — to each other. That’s how Wrestling with God came to be."
The thoughtful first-person stories of Wrestling with God are a fascinating record of the ways in which human beings — including the author — seek to make sense of their lives, relinquish their egos, and grapple with tragedy.
Wrestling with God is available as a paperback wherever books are sold. You can purchase it online from Amazon, Bookshop.org (which supports independent bookstores) as well as through your favorite bookstore.
Attention book groups: Wrestling with God was written with you in mind. Each of the people — from atheist to Zoroastrian — who tell their stories in this book has a distinctive experience of the Divine. These thoughtful, very personal stories are sure to inspire lively discussions in your group. I look forward to being part of those conversations. Stay tuned.
(Buy online. Supports independent bookstores)
Seekers of all persuasions will feel represented here, from priests, ministers, and rabbis to engineers,
physicists, and avowed non-believers. Taken together, the storytellers of Wrestling with God give voice to the reality of the modern world, which is multiphonic, skeptical, but also longing for deep meaning.
In the end, she finds God — not with thunderbolts or burning bushes —
The book arrives at a place of peace with the unknown, In a score of in-depth interviews with people from all walks of life — right and left, atheist and Christian, young and old — journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall incisively shows where these individuals find ultimate meaning.
—Phil Cousineau, author of The Art of Pilgrimage and The Lost Notebooks of Sisyphus
but through the heartfelt stories of people possessing
a wondrous array of spiritual temperament.
—Don Lattin, journalist and author of Distilled Spirits and The Harvard Psychedelic Club
of finally bowing to the enduring mystery of the universe and to
the persistence of human questions about the universe.
—Kay Campbell, the Huntsville Times
Some have had dramatic encounters with God while others
discover the transcendent in personal relationships or the beauty of the earth.
All, however, give thoughtful voice to the deepest questions of human life.
—Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood and The Twible