The Broken Way: A Daring Path into the Abundant Life

Bestselling author and speaker Voskamp (One Thousand Gifts) encourages readers to find love in their suffering and brokenness. She begins her memoir in the raw emotion of remembering a time in her teens when she cut herself on a broken jar to relieve an intractable pain she felt welling up inside her from an unidentifiable source. She compares this moment to the turmoil her own teenage daughter has been experiencing—feelings of disconnect, loneliness, and unworthiness. In 18 superbly developed chapters, she goes on to detail real life stories that will leave readers alternately weeping freely and celebrating ecstatically. One of the most poignant anecdotes tells of Voskamp’s 40th birthday: she spent the day with her family, visiting a nursing home, a coffee shop, and other places in their neighborhood to deliver gifts and pay for strangers’ coffee. Readers will find inspiration in Voskamp’s wonderful goal of attaining peace and closure after such tragic occurrences as losing a good friend to cancer. Tracking back and forth across the same broken ground, Voskamp’s work is no light reading. Those who summon up the courage to engage her weighty subject matter will discover a road map for charting the “brokenness that makes a canvas for God’s light.” [em](Oct.) [/em]