The Passion of Reverend Nash PDF Download

Author: Rachel Basch
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393057683
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
But when a depressed young mother she's been counseling suddenly disappears and a member of the church youth group gets pregnant, Jordanna's faith in God and herself is profoundly shaken.".

Author: Rachel Basch
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393350940
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
In the vein of Gail Godwin's Evensong, a powerful novel that explores faith and sisterhood in small-town New England. Reverend Jordanna Nash is the "dangerously tall," bicycle-riding, female minister who commands the pulpit of Hutchinson Congregational Church. She came to this Connecticut town where her sister and four nephews live in an attempt to escape the loss of her own two babies, as well as to distance herself from her faltering marriage. If Jordanna's personal life is cursed, her professional life is, seemingly, blessed—her congregation cherishes her dynamic presence in their community. But when a depressed young mother she's been counseling suddenly disappears and a member of the church youth group gets pregnant, Jordanna's faith in God and in herself is profoundly shaken. A novel about the role of faith in contemporary life, The Passion of Reverend Nash tells the story of a wounded healer who must make sense of her own grief if she is to continue caring for her flock. As Jordanna struggles to render meaning from loss, readers of her story will be taken on an unforgettable spiritual journey.

Author: Frank G. Honeycutt
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532605390
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Five hundred years after Luther’s famous posting of his 95 Theses in 1517, the church again faces an important crossroads. Sunday worship attendance is shrinking at alarming rates. There are now more “Elvis believers” in the US than Episcopalians and almost limitless spiritual options exist for those who seek faith and trust in something, but are hesitant to commit to a particular path leading to truth. The word prosthesis, normally associated with surgery, is also an apt word to describe the church’s need to forge a theological identity that fits our current context. The church faces change and a transformed body, but not at the expense of the biblical richness and tradition that fueled the restlessness of the reformers. The essays gathered here, arranged around the seasons of the church year, address familiar challenges faced by all pastors and leaders in an era of transition, specifically in Christian formation and discipleship. Appropriate for group and personal reflection, 95 Prostheses employs humor and biblical accessibility with the skeptical outsider who may be considering Jesus and his church for the first time in mind.

Author: Sherry Ellis
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101117834
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
A collection of personal writing exercises and commentary from some of today's best novelists, short story writers, and writing teachers, including Jill McCorkle, Amy Bloom, Robert Olen Butler, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Virgil Suarez, Margot Livesay, and more. What's the secret behind the successful and prolific careers of critically acclaimed novelists and short story writers Amy Bloom, Steve Almond, Jayne Anne Phillips, Alison Lurie, and others? Divine assistance? Otherworldly talent? An unsettlingly close relationship with the Muse? While the rest of us are staring at blank sheets of paper, struggling to come up with a first sentence, these writers are busy polishing off story after story and novel after novel. Despite producing work that may seem effortless, all of them have a simple technique for fending off writer's block: the writing exercise. In Now Write!, Sherry Ellis collects the personal writing exercises of today's best writers and lays bare the secret to their success. - In "The Photograph," Jill McCorkle divulges one of her tactics for handling material that takes plots in a million different directions; - National Book Award-nominee Amy Bloom offers "Water Buddies," an exercise for writers practicing their craft in workshops; - Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal and Candyfreak, provides a way to avoiding purple prose in "The Five-Second Shortcut to Writing in the Lyric Register"; - and eighty-three more of the country's top writers disclose their strategies for creating memorable prose. Complemented by brief commentary from the authors themselves, the exercises in Now Write! are practical and hands-on. By encouraging writers to shamelessly steal proven techniques that have yielded books which have won National Book Awards, Pulitzers, and Guggenheim grants, Now Write! inspires the aspiring writer to write now.

Author: Heather Skyler
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324864X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
A sun-baked, beautifully observed debut for readers who loved Amy and Isabelle—a mother and daughter come of age in Las Vegas. Helen is just fifteen, lanky and striking. She is a lifeguard at the pool at The Dunes hotel this summer—her first job, a step toward independence in a world beginning to treat her as an adult and a woman. Her mother, Kathy, watching Helen grow up, suddenly finds herself in a place equally uncertain: her children getting older, her stable marriage perhaps too stable, the slow days of summer leaving her adrift. When she meets Helen's boss, the manager at the pool, she chooses an affair that opens her to the idea of a different sort of life. Following Helen and Kathy through three summers, this novel is an intimate picture of two sexual awakenings under one roof and their aftershocks on a family. Heather Skyler shows us that the validity of life's deepest experiences—love, betrayal, acceptance—is never compromised by age. Reading group guide included.

Author: John Dufresne
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393285790
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Reissue of a favorite novel by “a generous and lyric storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) known for his tragicomic voice and unforgettable characters. Ever since Lafayette Proulx quit his day job, left his wife, hauled his dog and his Royal portable across town to Judi Dubey’s house, and set out at last to be a fiction writer, his life has been a sordid mess. Judi’s exotically dysfunctional family isn’t all to blame. Sure, the murders are disconcerting. And, yes, Judi’s father’s gone off the deep end. Worse are the vicious rejection letters Laf gets from editors. To top it off, Laf’s falling for Judi at the same time he’s nettled with guilt, is in marriage counseling with his wife, and is writing his long-hoped-for novel. When Judi is diagnosed with stage IV cancer, they both struggle to find the memory that will comfort, the truth that will redeem in a world where everyone suffers some kind of love disorder. John Dufresne, called “a highly readable Faulkner,” will once again take the literary world by storm with this new tragicomic tale.

Author: Ellen Feldman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039324606X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
"An appealing and inventive novel…original and cathartic." —Dana Kennedy, New York Times On February 16, 1944, Anne Frank recorded in her diary that Peter, whom she at first disliked and eventually came to love, had confided to her that if he got out alive, he would reinvent himself entirely. This novel is the story of what might have happened if the boy in hiding had survived to become a man. Peter arrives in America, the land of self-creation, and passes as a Christian. Successful in business and rich in love in the boom years of the 1950s, he thrives in the present, plans for the future, and has no past. But there is a cost to his charade. When The Diary of a Young Girl is published to worldwide acclaim, it triggers paralyzing memories of his experiences in the secret annex in Amsterdam. The diary is his story too, and once the floodgate of memory opens, his life spirals out of control. Based on extensive research of Peter van Pels and the strange and disturbing life Anne Frank's diary took on after her death, this is a novel about the memory of death, the death of memory, and the inescapability of the past. Reading group guide included.

Author: Diana Abu-Jaber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393066657
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
"Finally, a novel of literary suspense that gets almost everything right—forensically and psychologically." —Sarah Weinman, Baltimore Sun Secretly, in her heart of hearts, Lena Dawson hides the strangest of beliefs about her childhood. Hiding behind a cool competence as a superb fingerprint analyst in a crime lab in snowy Syracuse, New York, she feels totally out of place in the ordinary world of human interaction. Especially since the controlling husband who guided and protected her, then cheated and left her (though now he wants her back). Her uncanny ability to read a crime scene draws her into investigating a mysterious series of crib deaths—but ultimately the most difficult puzzle she must solve is the one of her own origins. Diana Abu-Jaber, a “gifted and graceful writer” (Chicago Tribune), masterfully “transcends formula” (Kirkus Reviews) as “the tension of Origin escalates, shaped as much by beautifully nuanced prose as menacing events” (New York Daily News).

Author: Leah Hager Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393077612
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
“Tantalizing ... captivating ... provocative.”—Booklist Late in her twentieth year, Beatrice, who dreams of a life on the stage, is confronting a home life torn asunder. She mails a letter on the sly to her grandmother, a legendary actress long estranged from the family, sparking events that will change her life forever. Powerfully written and psychologically intricate, House Lights illuminates the corrosive power of family secrets and the redemptive struggle to find truth, forgiveness, and love.

Author: G. Lee Ramsey
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
ISBN: 0664232248
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
In this compelling book, G. Lee Ramsey Jr.mines the riches of southern fiction and discovers a colorful assortment of ministers who arise out of the religious South. At once mystical and mischievous, these ministers haunt the margins of southern life while preaching a gospel that startles and compels. But their oddness is also their appeal--and part of their gift. For through these colorful portraits of Christian ministry, today's readers are challenged to think about what matters in ministry and to re-imagine ministry in ways that bring new life to the church and community. Throughout, Ramsey shows how ministers such as Roger Hagan in Will Campbell's The Conventionand Hazel Motes in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Bloodcan help show us the stumbling blocks to faithful ministry and steer clergy and congregations forward in today's world.