Cover Image

Everything happens for a reason and other lies I've loved

Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the School of Divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months befor...

Full description

Main Author: Bowler, Kate (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Random House, [2018]
Edition: First edition.
Subjects:
Bowler, Kate > Health.
Colon (Anatomy) > Cancer > Patients > United States > Biography.
Cancer > Patients > Family relationships.
Catastrophic illness > Religious aspects.
Faith movement (Hagin)
Christian life.
Autobiographies.
Summary: Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the School of Divinity at Duke, and had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart after years of trying, when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her 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 change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel" -- the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough -- Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.
Physical Description: xviii, 178 pages ; 20 cm
ISBN: 9780399592065
0399592067
Author Notes: Kate Bowler is a historian and author, born 1980 and based in North Carolina. She is an assistant professor of the history of Christianity in North America. Her debut book was Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (2013). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Guardian, TIME Magazine, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Washington Post, NPR, and the BBC. In 2015, She was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35. This led to her second book, Everything Happens for a Reason (and other lies I've loved) (2018).

(Bowker Author Biography)

Similar Items