Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved by Kate Bowler (A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER)

A savagely witty, warm and profound memoir by a young woman with a terminal illness, who contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her beloved husband and son, she is not the lynchpin of existence and life will go on.

London-born Kate Bowler, a thirty-five year-old professor at the school of divinity at Duke, had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, guzzled antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.

As Kate navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, she pulls the reader into her life and her history - affectionately filled with a colourful retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, parents, and doctors - and shares her irreverent, laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must cure her habit of 'skipping to the end' and planning the next move. An historian of the American Prosperity Gospel (the creed of the megachurches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough) Kate finds that she craves these same 'outrageous certainties'. Why is it so hard to surrender when she knows there are no spiritual guarantees?

In Everything Happens for Reason we encounter one of the talented, courageous few who - like Paul Kalanithi - can articulate the grief we feel as we contemplate our own mortality.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0399592067

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (6 Feb. 2018)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 208 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780399592065

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0399592065

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.28 x 2.39 x 19.79 cm

Review

"A meditation on sense-making when there's no sense to be made, on letting go when we can't hold on, and on being unafraid even when we're terrified. And it happens to be hilarious. Above all, though, this is a love letter to life, and it's gorgeous."--Lucy Kalanithi, MD, FACP, clinical assistant professor of medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

"[A] wonderful new memoir . . . Everything Happens belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal. . . . It's inspiring to see this thoughtful woman face such weighty topics with honesty and humor."--Bill Gates

About the Author

Kate Bowler is an assistant professor at Duke Divinity School. A graduate of Yale Divinity School and Duke University, Bowler is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and son.