Staff Picks

This memoir made me laugh out loud and tear up, too. There were so many things I didn't know about Beth Moore, from the challenges she faced as an Evangelical woman in ministry to the hardships she and her husband face together. If you enjoy religious memoirs, you will definitely enjoy this one!

 

Publisher's description:

Author, speaker, visionary, and founder of Living Proof Ministries Beth Moore has devoted her whole life to helping women across the globe come to know the transforming power of Jesus. An established writer of many acclaimed books and Bible studies for women on spiritual growth and personal development, Beth now unveils her own story in a much-anticipated debut memoir. All My Knotted-Up Life includes...an exploration of Beth's childhood, love, marriage, and motherhood; insights on what it was like when she was 'waist-deep in a season of loss;' a discussion of her 2018 break with the Southern Baptist movement; and details on the origins of Living Proof Ministries. All My Knotted-Up Life is told with surprising candor about some of the personal heartbreaks and behind-the-scenes challenges that have marked Beth's life. But beyond that, it's a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God's enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people's full stories … we'd all walk around slack-jawed.

 

This book finds its uniqueness in that it not only provides a vast cultural history spanning countless thousands of years, but it also explores the tenets and foundations of many religions, all in a fairly short number of pages. The basis for it all is the evidence that the author acquired toward the fact that, from prehistory to the fall of the Roman Empire, women were of central importance in religious ceremonies via the playing of the frame drum in particular.

 

Publisher's description: 

For millennia, the sacred drummers of pre-Christian Mediterranean and western Asia were women. In this inspiring book, Layne Redmond, herself a renowned drummer, tells their history. Artistic representations reveal that female frame drummers carried the spiritual traditions of many of the earliest recorded civilizations. During those ancient times, the drummer-priestesses held the keys to experience of the divine through rhythm. They were at the center of the goddess worship of matriarchal societies until the ascendance of patriarchal cultures and the loss of drumming as a spiritual technology. With wisdom and passion, Redmond chronicles our species' deep connection to the drum, our rich heritage of inseparable spirituality and music, and the modern-day women reclaiming it. This book encourages readers--both women and men--to reestablish rhythmic links with themselves, nature, and other people through the power of drumming. Redmond illustrates her message with an extensive collection of images gathered during ten years of research and travel. Woven throughout the book are strands of ancient ritual and mythology, personal stories, and scientific evidence of the benefits of drumming. It is at once a history, a memoir, and a resounding call for spiritual and social renewal.

Find When the Drummers Were Women in our online catalog. 

Boliva, a remote Mennonite colony, 2009: over 100 women aged 2-60 discover that the wounds they've been waking up to find covering their bodies were not the work of the devil, but rather of their fellow male colony members. When the men leave to try and bail the accused out of jail, the illiterate women with little knowledge of the outside world are left alone to decide their fates. This charged and philosophical novel, told through the women's meeting minutes, is based on a revolting true story.

 

Publisher's description:

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women--all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in--have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they've ever known or should they dare to escape?

 

Educated is a memoir, so it is a bit slower at times. Although it's hard to get into at first, it's overall a good read and an empowering almost rags to riches story. Westover illustrates her upbringing, which is very different from what would generally be considered "normal" in a descriptive way. She depicts her childhood, and the stories that made her who she is today, some of which are surprising. Westover's story cements the idea that having an education can be a privilege and is something people often take for granted. The book is slightly more mature, so I'd recommend it to people with a slightly higher reading level who want a book with an empowering story. 

- Anonymous 12th grade teen volunteer

 

Publisher's description:

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent. When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

 

Find Educated: A Memoir in our online catalog.
 

"Dearly Beloved" presents issues that I am rarely drawn to; liturgical questions do not interest me. But this novel tackles two questions that do engage me: What possesses someone to be called to the ministry? And can a couple with opposite beliefs find happiness? When Charles and James are jointly hired to steward the historic Third Presbyterian Church through turbulent times, they and their wives share decades of love and friendship, jealousy and understanding, forgiveness and commitment. Deep, abiding faith shares the page with atheism as the two couples wrestle with life as the leaders of a troubled congregation wishing to maintain relevance in a quickly changing world.