As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 looms, religion publishers are promoting books by everyone from survivors and first responders to theologians and novelists. No matter the approach, their purpose is simple--to find meaning in an incomprehensible act.
But publishers note there are few author appearances at memorials and observances on the actual day. They must strike a balance between promoting these new titles and honoring the day’s dead.
“It is about honoring and remembering,” says Jennifer Smith, director of publicity for Simon & Schuster. “It is not just about the promotion of the book, it is about telling the story.”
S&S’s Howard Books is walking that fine line with Angel in the Rubble: The Miraculous Rescue of 9/11‘s Last Survivor by Genelle Guzman-McMillan with Willliam Croyle (August). Guzman-McMillan spent 27 hours trapped under the rubble, during which she experienced a kind of religious conversion. Dennis Smith, a former firefighter, has A Decade of Hope (Viking, Aug.) a collection of inspiring stories about survivors and their families.
The 10th anniversary of the attacks brings a new wave of Christian books tracing the hand of God among the ashes. In What a Difference a Day Makes: Ten Years Later by James W. Moore (Abingdon, Aug.), a Texas pastor presents a kind of a devotional that examines questions raised by the attack, such as where was God? Brazos Press has Who Is My Enemy? Questions Christians Must Face about Islam by Lee Camp, a theologian.
Several books look at Islam through a Christian lens. In Behind the Veils of Yemen: How an American Woman Risked Her Life, Family, and Faith to Bring Jesus to Muslim Women (Baker Books, Sept.), Christian missionary Audra Grace Shelby describes her work in the Middle Eastern countries that birthed the terrorists. Lost Coast Press takes an ecumenical approach with Understanding Each Other After 9/11: What Everyone Should Know About the Religions of the World by Kirk Heriot (Nov.). Heriot was inspired in part by the Sept. 15, 2001, murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, an American Sikh mistaken for a Muslim by a revenge-seeker because he was wearing a turban.
Muslims have a voice among these books, too. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, a professor of the history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University, has Becoming American?: The Forging of Arab and Muslim Identity in Pluralist America (Baylor University Press, Oct.; reviewed in this issue). Haddad examines the Muslim experience in America and argues that its followers make unique and positive contributions to the public and private spheres of American life. In the Jewish category, Beth Din of America Press and K’hal Publishing offer Contending with Catastrophe: Jewish Perspectives on September 11 (Sept.) a collection of scholarly essays edited by Michael Broyde.
In fiction, Karen Kingsbury offers the third installment in her 9/11 series, Remember Tuesday Morning (Zondervan, Aug.), about a man whose firefighter father was killed at the World Trade Center. Abingdon enters the 9/11 fiction category for the first time with From Ashes to Honor by Loree Lough (Sept), the first of a new First Responders series in which the approaching 10th anniversary is part of the plot.
