cover image No Hiding Place: Empowerment and Recovery for Our Troubled Communities

No Hiding Place: Empowerment and Recovery for Our Troubled Communities

Cecil Williams. HarperOne, $18 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-06-250967-3

The pastor of Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco, which is nationally known for the success of its community activism, speaks of the spiritual power that drives the church's innovative recovery programs. In a colloquial, often earthy narrative--written with freelancer Laird and interspersed with vignettes of men and women who find help overcoming their addictions at Glide--Williams recounts his own troubled history as an African American, and the epiphany that prompted him to fashion a ``theology of recovery.'' Under the leadership of the spirited Methodist minister and his Asian American wife, recovery efforts begun 25 years ago have burgeoned into a variety of self-actualization programs, ranging from drug abuse treatment and AIDS prevention to ``empowerment'' for African Americans. Williams speaks candidly as a black man and father and stresses with contagious enthusiasm that ``there is no stopping a group of people marching forward armed with the Spirit and girded with the truth.'' Photos not seen by PW. $40,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Oct.)