Every once in a long while you come across a book so lovely, so true, so fulfilling and inspirational and sweet and funny and altogether miraculous that you desperately want to tell all your friends about it, and you want to buy hundreds of copies and mail them as presents to everyone you ever met, and you want to write long reviews and make the author famous, and you also want to meet the author and shake her hand and tell her how she changed your life forever. And then you share with friends, and you think with pleasure how much they're going to love it, as much as you do, you think, and then you . . . remember. Oh, my, she does have a bit of a potty mouth, doesn't she? And her life has been basically a disaster. And she's far more politically liberal than most of the people you're recommending it to. And you start to have second thoughts.

I've written and rewritten this post ten times, because this book is so important to me, and I want you all to love it as much as I do, and I'm afraid you won't. And this review is already pretty much a disaster, alternatively apologetic and gushing. But if I don't send it off now, today, this second, I'll chicken again and not send it at all. So here goes. 

Anne Lemott wrote the Mothers Who Think column for Salon magazine, until the last few weeks, when she took a leave of absence to write a novel. Although she's not LDS, her writing is filled with ideas of grace and faith, and miracles, and truth, and repentance, all expressed in unapologetically Christian terms. I think in a lot of ways she's truer than many LDS writers I admire, or closer to the truth. Truth, with a capital T, I should say. Only she's Christian in the liberal Christian sense, Christian like Lutherans and Methodists and Episcopalians are Christian, not like Pentecostals or Southern Baptists. She's part of that much maligned branch of liberal Christianity that we like to dismiss as, what, sort of squishy and non-assertive and PC. That branch of Christianity we think has Lost Its Way. And yet grace and prayer and faith and miracles are central to, not only her writing, but everything she's about. Only she's . . . 

No. That's not working. I'm apologizing again. Try another tack.

Anne Lemott is a single mother, deeply devoted to raising her son, deeply in love with the heartwrenching daily task we call parenting, and yet she's honest enough to admit that children can be infuriating and rude and impossible, and that her son, who is the center of her existence, sometimes drives her completely mad. And her ruminations on parenting, and the role of prayer in her own parenting, are some of the most honest . . . 

No, I'm still not capturing it. Try again.

Anne Lemott is an alcoholic. She's also recovering from drug addictions of various kinds, severe bulemia and a variety of utterly unwholesome and unhealthy sexual escapades and pathologies. She believes that her continuing recovery from all these problems has been and remains a miracle, an example of God's grace bestowed on an unworthy sinner. Her gratitude for His divine grace permeates every page of. . . . 

No, that's awful, makes it sound like a Reader's Digest story or something. 

I give up. You may not like her. She uses the F-word quite a bit. She's very liberal politically, which I like but which some of you may find off-putting. She writes with wonderful clarity and simplicity, but she's also pretty self-absorbed. I've been reading her aloud to my wife every evening, and we both love her book passionately. But you may not. I guarantee nothing. 

But let me say this. If you believe that liberal Christianity has lost its way, surrending its basic beliefs in a maze of liberation theology or political correctness, Anne Lemott will be a bracing corrective. If you want an intelligent, honest, clear-minded look at the role grace plays in the life of a believing Christian, give her a try. And if you want a perspective which captures the very essence of the message of the Book of Mormon, the idea of faith in the midst of despair, hope in the midst of slaughter, grace in the midst of unimaginable sin, I can't recommend anything better. She's not LDS, and she's got some ideas that we would have serious problems with. But I can hardly think of a single LDS writer who I prefer to read. It's a short book, with lots of personal essays, and a very easy read. Give her a try.

Eric Samuelsen