All Ray Peterson ever wanted was to escape the rough, unforgiving neighborhood he grew up in; for him that meant working hard ... all the time. Eventually, Ray's life would include all the trappings of a good one. However, the sacrifices he made to get there cut too deep. It isn't until tragedy strikes that Ray realizes that his family needed more.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” “Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Christian Scientist Caroline Fraser comes the first unvarnished account of one of America's most controversial and little-understood religious movements. Millions of Americans – from Lady Astor to Ginger Rogers to Watergate conspirator H. R. Haldeman – have been touched by the Church of Christ, Scientist. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879, Christian Science was based on a belief that intense contemplation of the perfection of God can heal all ills – an extreme expression of the American faith in self-reliance. In this unflinching investigation, Caroline Fraser, herself raised in a Scientist household, shows how the Church transformed itself from a small, eccentric sect into a politically powerful and socially respectable religion, and explores the human cost of Christian Science's remarkable rise. Fraser examines the strange life and psychology of Mary Baker Eddy, who lived in dread of a kind of witchcraft she called Malicious Animal Magnetism. She takes us into the closed world of Eddy's followers, who refuse to acknowledge the existence of illness and death and reject modern medicine, even at the cost of their children's lives. She reveals just how Christian Science managed to gain extraordinary legal and Congressional sanction for its dubious practices and tracks its enormous influence on new-age beliefs and other modern healing cults. A passionate exposé of zealotry, God's Perfect Child tells one of the most dramatic and little-known stories in American religious history.
This book helps to ask questions about God no matter what you believe. Who is God? Where do I go when I die? Is God even real? This book answers none of these questions, but it asks them all! It is a thoughtful book that enforces no views but stresses the importance of a healthy dialogue, curiosity, love, and wonder.
A rhyming, read-aloud book with warm illustrations conveys a comforting, faith-filled message from a Black father and mother to their children who see visual representations of their faith, but question what it means when they don't see their skin color, their physical features, or their gender portrayed. "What about the angels, will they stop and stare, when they see that I may not have their same color hair?" asks the girl. In soothing verse, the father assures his children that everyone looks like Jesus and the angels by the things they do. As the family walks through their neighborhood, the father points out the beauty in God's creations, from flowers, all unique and different, to all the children in their community "each with skin a different shade." He reminds his children that pictures of faith such as angels were drawn by someone and encourages his children to draw their own pictures so angels look like all of us.
“The modern master of life-under-combat [delivers] an engrossing, uncompromisingly suspenseful tale” of high-tech warfare (Kirkus Reviews). As the Good Book says, “Blessed are the Peace Keepers, for they will be called God’s Children.” Yet for American soldiers deployed to warzones on foreign soil, peacekeeping is not child’s play. In this action-filled technothriller, author and military expert Harold Coyle examines some of the most pressing issues facing today’s soldiers. When ethnic tensions in near-future Slovakia reach a boiling point, the US Army sends troops to join a NATO force in the region. God’s Children tells the story of 3rd Platoon, C Company, 2nd Battalion of the 13th Infantry, and two young officers who try to keep a peace that is falling apart before their very eyes.
This board book for infants and toddlers explores the gifts of water, baptism and belonging. The illustrations help children connect to their baptism and reinforce the baptismal connections that surround us everyday.
From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road • In this taut, chilling story, Lester Ballard—a violent, dispossessed man falsely accused of rape—haunts the hill country of East Tennessee when he is released from jail. While telling his story, Cormac McCarthy depicts the most sordid aspects of life with dignity, humor, and characteristic lyrical brilliance. "Like the novelists he admires-Melville, Dostoyevsky, Faulkner-Cormac McCarthy has created an imaginative oeuvre greater and deeper than any single book. Such writers wrestle with the gods themselves." —Washington Post Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.