A decade ago, Kate Bowler, then 35, diagnosed with a fatal cancer, was given mere months to live. But look: this wife and mother of a toddler, this Duke University Divinity School professor, has lived to write Everything Happens for a Reason. In it, she, according to The Optimist—which called the work “beautifully raw”—“essentially destroys” the notion, popular among true believers, that everything happens for a reason.
Winnipeg-born, Bowler “relates her suddenly terrifying life to her academic work on the prosperity gospel,” Publishers Weekly explains, “a peculiarly American belief in deserved success and control that is at odds with her current life.” She “pierces platitudes to showcase her resilience.” PW concludes: “This poignant look at the unpredictable promises of faith will amaze readers.”
Others concurr: Bowler affirms “that much of the work of living life is preparing to leave it. […] Life doesn’t keep. But love does. And so we are saved, even when all seems lost.” [bycommonconsent.com]; “So much pain, so much glory, no tidy explanations—just an absolute miracle of a book.” [The Other Journal]; “Bowler’s memoir bears witness to the tension that life can be beautiful and hard, both.” [Christians for Social Action].
Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved
By Kate Bowler
Random House, 2018