This might be the most growth I’ve seen in a memoirist from one book to another. In Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, Rachel Held Evans (author of the somewhat snarky takedown of Fundamentalist Christianity, A Year of Biblical Womanhood), offers a heartfelt and achingly honest account of her attempts to reconcile her longing for a faith community with the disappointment so many people find there.  One gets the sense that Held dug deep for this one, and the results are profound. She resists the temptation to simply cast stones at Evangelicalism, and instead focuses on a few communities trying to build something transformative and honest in the name of Jesus. Not every question is answered, and she doesn’t offer herself as an authority on the quest for faith. This is truly the account of one pilgrim. I’m so glad I read it and I look forward to what comes next for her. I hope she continues in this vein, because it’s a rich one.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.