Many years ago my grandmother succumbed to cancer and went to be with Jesus. Among the things she left behind, buried among other personal effects, was a long, handwritten letter from Joni Eareckson Tada. My grandmother had experienced excruciating pain in her life, losing both a daughter and her husband to suicide. As a new Christian she had written to Joni to share her grief, believing that perhaps in Joni there would be someone who might understand and who might give her hope. And she did. In this letter she mourned with one who was mourning and shared hope grounded in the gospel.

Joni is one of those entirely unique Christian personalities and one who is universally loved and admired. Her ministry has continued for decades, and through conferences and radio and music and books and every other media she has been sharing encouragement and hope. I have seen Joni speak a few times and off to the side I’ve always spotted her husband, Ken. So much has been said about her, but so little about him. He is content to love and serve his wife and to allow her to be center-stage. But I’ve wondered who he is and what his role has been in Joni’s life and ministry. Their story is finally being told in Joni & Ken: An Untold Love Story. 

This is an honest book that tells the story of what has not always been an easy marriage. Though Ken married Joni after her accident and after she had become a renowned Christian personality, neither of them was prepared for all the challenges that marriage would bring. What started as a great love story soon began to lose some of its lustre. While the love remained, the romance and respect faded. But the Lord was not done with them and sparked a great renewal of love and romance. Their story is not one of unfading, unattainable marital bliss, but one that is so very real, and one that went through difficult valleys. Though it is unique in many of its particulars, in other ways it looks like so many other marriages. 

As I read about Joni and Ken I found myself growing in my love for Aileen. Isn’t it funny that reading about another couple’s marriage can do this? Yet their love for one another is contagious, the way they pray and laugh and sing together is admirable, and the way Ken has sacrificed so much for Joni is Ephesians 5:25 in action. I learned about love and sacrifice and deep intimacy from this portrait of their marriage.

Without a doubt, C.S. Lewis is one of the most interesting, perplexing and polarizing figures in recent Christian history. For some he is a giant of the faith who asked questions few were willing to ask and who answered those questions in compelling ways. For others he is no Christian at all, a fake, a fraud, who revoked his faith at the end of his life. Few men are seen in such contradictory ways. What is undeniable is that Lewis remains a hero to many Christians and that his influence continues to grow even fifty years after his death.

Lewis has been the subject of several full-length biographies but I would suggest none is as fine as Alister McGrath’s new C. S. Lewis - A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet. Where most of Lewis’ previous biographers were former friends and acquaintances, McGrath never knew C.S. Lewis. He may not write as beautifully as George Sayer (Jack) and he may not be able to offer the warm, personal insights that come from enjoying a personal relationship with his subject, but he has the advantage of a critical distance that was lacking in some of those previous accounts.

The book’s subtitle aptly captures his portrait of C.S. Lewis: an eccentric genius who was also reluctantly prophetic to his generation and to our own. Lewis’ eccentricities were many. McGrath looks deeply into the strange relationship with the mysterious Mrs. Moore, finally saying what biographers have been reluctant to admit: that for many years Lewis was living in a common-law relationship with the mother of one of his dear friends. He looks as well at Lewis’ unexpected marriage to Joy Davidman and tries to discern whether this was a marriage of convenience, whether it was a gold-digging woman taking advantage of a naive man, or whether there really was a spark between the two. He examines Lewis as a friend, a brother, a professor and an unexpected celebrity.

Mez McConnell has an interesting story to tell—a story of the transforming grace of God in his life. Where some children grow up under the loving care of kind parents, Mez was left to tumble up on his own after his mother abandoned him, after his father took up with an abusive woman. Roaming the streets of Yorkshire, he lived a life of drugs and burglary and violence, eventually and inevitably finding himself confined to one of the nation’s worst prisons.

But even as he was living the life of a nihilist, God was chasing him down. He did this by introducing just a few Christians into his life. Those Christians pursued him even to prison, they allowed him to live with them when he was released, they invited him into their lives, and through it all Mez was slowly transformed. He put his faith in Jesus Christ and now pastors Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh. He also oversees 20 Schemes, a ministry committed to planting healthy, gospel-centered churches in Scotland’s poorest communities, known as “schemes.” 

Mez shares his life story (so far) in Is There Anybody Out There?. This is a wonderfully, and sometimes hilariously, off-beat memoir that is written largely in the present tense and with a good bit of stream-of-consciousness. While Mez has become a believer, he has retained a peculiar and honest way of seeing things. This anecdote from his time in Bible college gives a glimpse of the way he sees himself:

People are so introverted here. They just want to talk about their feelings all the time. I’m not interested in how I feel about my father and all that psycho-babble; I just want to know more about God, Jesus and the Bible. Apparently, that’s not possible unless I ‘understand myself’. Well, I think I understand myself pretty well. I was a liar, manipulator, thief, fornicator and all round scumbag. For some reason Jesus chose to die for me, and that will do for me. I can’t pretend to understand it all, but I accept it gratefully. So, I’m just not interested in revisiting the past. I can’t do anything about it, but with Jesus I can do something about the future. That’s about the only ‘self understanding’ that I need.

Shon Hopwood robbed five banks before he was apprehended and sentenced to spend twelve years behind bars. Just twenty-three years of age, he was suddenly looking at living out some of his prime years in a federal penitentiary. Yet he somehow managed to find his place, not in sports or in gangs, but in the law library. There he found that he had a deep interest in the law and a knack for understanding it. Before too long he had become the resident jailhouse lawyer. In and of itself, this is not too unusual—every prison has its inmates who have an interest in law. But Hopwood stands out as the only one who wrote a petition that was accepted by the Supreme Court.

That is a notable accomplishment. There was another inmate in the prison whom Hopwood came to see had been trained unfairly in his arrest and conviction. The only hope was to appeal to the Supreme Court, something hundreds of people do each year. To make an appeal requires following a very rigid and specialized process that can confound even a season lawyer. Even then, only the smallest fraction of those cases make it past even the preliminary process of evaluation and acceptance. But Hopwood’s appeal was noticed and was just and was brought before the court. Even from behind bars he was able to be involved in the case, giving him an opportunity to become friends with some of the country’s top litigators.

The notoriety Hopwood gained has given him the opportunity to write Law Man, a memoir that releases today. This is the story of “robbing banks, winning supreme court cases, and finding redemption” (according to the subtitle). What you won’t find unless you read to the end is that the word “redemption” points well beyond the court room. All through Hopwood’s time in prison, friends and family were praying for him and sending him good books. Not only that, but there were Christians around him in the penitentiary. Shortly after his release, he got to the very end of himself and became a believer. He is now a student at University of Washington School of Law and attends Mars Hill Church U-District in Seattle, where Justin Holcomb serves as pastor.

Have you ever read one of those books that is so strange, so unbelievable, that you are just waiting for the author to admit that she has just been making it all up? On more than one occasion I found myself waiting for that kind of a punchline while reading The Devil in Pew Number Seven. A recent addition to the New York Times list of non-fiction bestsellers, the book tells the sad, tragic and yet remarkably stirring story of Robert Nichols, a old-fashioned revival preacher who moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as pastor.

I hesitate to say too much about the story because, well, the Devil (in Pew Number Seven) is in the detail. To say too much, would be to give it all away. Let me stick with the publisher’s carefully-chosen description:

Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him--with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca's father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family's kitchen … And Rebecca's life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family's faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.

That is detailed enough to give a sense of the book’s content, yet vague enough not reveal the strange twists and turns. At heart the book describes a real-life fight of good versus evil and it is never certain who will triumph and how victory will come. Even now it is hard to say.

Adam Brown was one of the elite of the elite, a member of SEAL Team SIX, the counterterrorism unit that has among its accomplishments the capture of Osama bin Laden. Brown was also a man with a history of addiction and all that attends it—theft and broken relationships and devastation. Most important of all, Brown was a man who had experienced grace and forgiveness through a relationship with Jesus Christ. His story, told by Eric Blehm in the book Fearless, is making waves today, having established itself on the New York Times list of bestsellers.

In many ways Fearless is typical for the biography of a warrior. It tracks Brown through his childhood and then, once he had made up his mind to join the Navy, through bootcamps, other forms of training, and eventually, through deployment in South America, Afghanistan and Iraq. Along the way we read of his brutal battle with addiction to crack cocaine, an addiction that followed him and haunted him even years after he had been through recovery. We also read of how he came to faith, eventually following the example of his parents and mentors, giving his life in service to Jesus Christ.

Brown’s life came to an end on March 17, 2010, the day he was gunned down in the mountains of Afghanistan, losing his life in service to his country while destroying a dangerous terrorist cell. Of course his story continues in this book and in the lives of his wife and children and friends.

Eric Blehm has penned a powerful book in Fearless. It is well-written and tells an intriguing story of a fascinating individual. I would suggest that the main reason for the book’s appeal is in Brown’s quirky character. He was a fearless warrior and one with an impossibly high pain threshhold. He was one of those people who seemed to live his life in overdrive, doing things that appear to be fool-hardy or near-impossible or, in all likelihood, both. He was an eminently likeable guy.

When Abby Johnson quit her job in 2009, it became national news. Johnson was director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas and did not merely quit her job, but also changed sides in the abortion battle. Formerly an employee of the organization that performs more abortions than any other, she had come to believe that abortion was morally offensive. What was it that caused her to change sides? She witnessed an abortion. On the screen of an ultrasound machine, she witnessed human life being dismembered and destroyed, and in an instant she saw what she had denied for so long—what was being aborted was a baby, not just a potential baby or a blob of tissue. She had been an eyewitness to murder and not only that, but she had been complicit in countless other murders.

Unplanned tells Johnson’s story, from being recruited by Planned Parenthood while she was a college student, to rising through the ranks and eventually becoming the director of a clinic. She also tells of her own history of abortion and how she found forgiveness for the sins of her youth.

This book has several strengths to commend it—several reasons you may want to read it.

First, it comes from an insider’s perspective, clearly describing the arguments, verbiage and subtleties used by Planned Parenthood and similiar organizations as they promote their pro-choice agenda. They weigh every word and their every action represents a careful strategy. Johnson proves what pro-life advocates have been saying all along, that although Planned Parenthood does provide some valid and valuable services for women, it is at heart an abortion provider.

I guess I’ve made my love of baseball well-known around these parts. Just as a sampler, I’ve reviewed a biography of Albert Pujols, I’ve interviewed Ben Zobrist, and a long time ago, back when the site was in its infancy, I gave a short example of why I love the game. Baseball remains the best sport around and watching it is one of my favorite pasttimes. This weekend a reader of the site mentioned that R.A. Dickey, a ballplayer and Christian to boot, had released a memoir. I picked it up and read it over the weekend. I’m glad I did.

Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball is one of the most gut-honest sports memoirs I’ve read. Dickey’s life has been anything but easy, both on the field and off. Born into a turbulent home, he tumbled up more than he grew up, enduring divorce and excruciating sexual abuse. A high school friend shared the gospel with him and from a young age he professed faith in Jesus Christ. Here is how he describes this experience:

So on a fall Friday in an upstairs bedroom on Walnut Drive in Nashville, Tennessee, I get on my knees with Bo and his mom and ask Christ to come into my life. I tell Him that I believe He is the son of God, and I want to trust Him with my life. I secretly ask for forgiveness for what seems like a galaxy of sins and guilt and shame. When I am done speaking, the room is completely still. I feel relief. A lightness. It's not the sky opening up, or angels singing, or lightning bolts striking the big magnolia in the front yard. Nothing grand and God-like. It's much more subtle, like the best deep breath you could ever take.

Dickey began to show great promise in two areas—his proficiency with the English language and his athletic ability. These twin strengths took him to the University of Tennessee where he played baseball for the Volunteers and majored in English literature.

If books dealing with death are to be a regular part of my reading diet, so too are books on missions. I don’t mean missional living or the mere theory of mission work, but books describing real work on the real mission field. In Reckless Abandon, David Sitton of To Every Tribe Ministries has given us a good one as he recounts a lifetime of experiences among the most difficult to reach peoples.

While Reckless Abandon is certainly not less than a book of stories from the field, it offers significantly more than that. As Sitton recounts his experiences in Papua New Guinea, he weaves into it his own philosophy of missions, one that calls for (you guessed it), reckless abandon. He defines the term like this: “To give oneself unrestrainedly to the cause of Jesus and the promotion of His kingdom without concern for danger and the consequences of that action.” His life models just that.

That kind of recklessness and abandon begins with an understanding of the beauty and power of the gospel. He says it well: “The gospel is so valuable that no risk is unreasonable. Life is gained by laying it down for the gospel. If I live, I win and get to keep on preaching Christ. If I die, I win bigger by going directly to be with Christ and I get to take a few tribes with me.”

His life story exemplifies that level of commitment. Converted as a young man, he very quickly determined that he was being called to foreign missions, and not only that, but was being called to go where no one had gone before. He wanted to be like Paul, not building on another man’s foundation but laying the foundation himself. He soon found himself in Papua New Guinea, trekking through the jungle, approaching tribes that had never even seen even a single caucasian man before. Wherever he went he proclaimed the gospel. Needless to say, his life has not been one of ease, but the Lord has used him powerfully to save the lost and to inspire others to follow in his footsteps.

Right there are the top of the New York Times list of nonfiction bestsellers is The Vow by Kim and Krickitt Carpenter. This book was published by B&H Books (a Christian publisher) twelve years ago, so what is it doing at the top of this week’s list? Well, 4 years before that the authors signed a deal for the movie rights to this story and after all these years that movie has finally hit the big screen. A new edition of the book has been published to coincide with the film and it has raced right to the top of the list.

I have not seen the movie and neither do I intend to, so this is a review of only the book. From what I hear, the film is only very loosely based on the broad outline of the story; not only is it a poor movie according to the reviews, but it also ignores the Christian moorings that are so important to the real-life characters.

So what is The Vow all about? Kim and Krickitt Carpenter had been married for just 10 weeks when they were in a serious accident in which Krickitt suffered traumatic head injuries. When she woke from her coma she had no recollection of her husband and no recollection of ever having been married to him. Not only that, but her personality was very different; once a sweet and kind person, she was now often angry and frustrated and cruel. But in his marriage vows Kim had promised to remain with her, and that is exactly what he did, suffering deeply as he cared for the wife who no longer knew him and who no longer wanted him. The Vow tells their tale, from dating to marriage to the accident and back to dating as they try to fall in love a second time. It is a stirring story in many ways—an inspirational one that deserves to be told.

Central to The Vow is the Carpenter’s Christian faith. There is never any doubt that this is a distinctly Christian book, meant to make the reader understand that the vows that held this couple together were made before God and that even in the darkest days these two remained accountable to God. They give all credit and glory to God as the one who held them together despite their unique and trying circumstances.

Yet despite all of that, I found myself wishing that this book was just a little bit more. I wanted it to dive deeper into the realities of marriage, to do more to anchor the story in gospel truths—not just “Jesus” but “Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead,” not just marriage as an institution, but marriage as a display of the gospel. The broad outline of the story is so good, but the execution feels dry and inadequate. Marriage is certainly not less than “the vow,” but it is so much more!