EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR REASON

A divinity professor and young mother with a Stage IV cancer diagnosis asks whybad things happen and tries to love life--and God--without certainty.Thirty-five-year-old Kate Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity atDuke and, after years of trying, had finally had a baby with her childhoodsweetheart when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirtypounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she wasfinally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeplyinto her life, which she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilariousretinue of friends, mega-church preachers, parents, and doctors, and shares herirreverant, laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. Shewonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden ofpositivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, sherealizes she must cure her habit of "skipping to the end" and planning the nextmove. A historian of the "American Prosperity Gospel"--the creed of themegachurches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badlyenough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same"outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard just to surrender evenwhen she knows she has no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that,even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and thatwithout her, life will go on.