Synopses & Reviews
RICHARD LISCHER has taught for more than thirty years at Duke Divinity School. His many books include the prize-winning The Preacher King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Word that Moved America and an earlier memoir, Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery. He and his wife live in Orange County, North Carolina.
Synopsis
A father's heartbreaking and hopeful story about his beloved son, in which a young man teaches his family "a new way to die" with wit, candor, and grace.
A book after my own heart, profound, gorgeous, deeply spiritual and human, beautifully written, heartbreaking, but also, because of the writer's wisdom and spirit, triumphant. --Anne Lamott
As the book opens, Richard Lischer's son, Adam, calls to tell his father, a professor of divinity at Duke University, that his cancer has returned. Adam is a charismatic young man with a promising law career, and that his wife is pregnant with their first child makes the disease's return all the more devastating. Despite the cruel course of the illness, Adam's growing weakness evokes in him a remarkable spiritual strength. This is the story of one last summer, lived as honestly and faithfully as possible. Deeply moving and utterly lacking in sentimentality or self-pity, Stations of the Heart is an unforgettable book about life and death and the terrible blessing of saying good-bye.
About the Author
This poignant love story of a father for his son is at once funny, heartbreaking, and hopeful
. In it a young man teaches his entire family “a new way to die” with wit, candor, and, always, remarkable grace. This emotionally riveting account probes the heart without sentimentality or self-pity.
As the book opens, Richard Lischer’s son, Adam, calls to tell his father, a professor of divinity at Duke University, that his cancer has returned. Adam is a smart, charismatic young man with a promising law career, and an unlikely candidate for tragedy. That his young wife is pregnant with their first child makes the disease’s return all the more devastating. Despite the crushing magnitude of his diagnosis and the cruel course of the illness, Adam’s growing weakness evokes in him an unexpected strength.
This is the story of one last summer and the young man who lived it as honestly and faithfully as possible. We meet Adam in many phases of his growing up, but always through the narrow lens of his undying hope, when in the final season of his life he becomes his family’s (and his father’s) spiritual leader. Honest in its every dimension, Stations of the Heart is an unforgettable book about life and death and the terrible blessing of saying good-bye.