Wrestling With God: Stories of Doubt and Faith

Longtime reporter Newhall takes the reader on a wild and wonderful ride, with sixteen individuals whom she interviewed and who talk about their faith in their own words. Though she suggests that she has not been hit by any thunderbolts of revelation in her life, Newhall has an uncanny way of shaping a story that engages a seeker of a higher power in the world. She writes, “I’m just a regular, garden-variety person, a hopeful, churchgoing skeptic whose moods jostle between doubting, seeking, hoping, believing—and right back to doubting.” Throughout her interviews with a World War II vet, a nun who started a meditation sanctuary, and a Buddhist monk who made a 30-month pilgrimage in California, and others, God becomes present in her subjects’ faith. In the end Newhall writes of what she finds for herself. Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer. (Feb.)