Frank Carlson Library

"There is a voice of longing inside every woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good mothers, daughters, partners, employees, citizens, and friends. We believe all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives, relationships, and world, and wonder: Wasn't it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to...

Bolz-Weber invites readers into a surprising encounter with what she calls 'a religious but not-so-spiritual life.' Tattooed, angry, and profane, this former standup comic turned pastor stubbornly, sometimes hilariously, resists the God she feels called to serve. But God keeps showing up in the least likely of people -- a church-loving agnostic, a drag queen, a felonious Bishop, and a gun-toting member of the NRA. As she lives and worships alongside...

Now a major motion picture starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum, "The Vow" tells the true story of a couple that defied the odds and fell in love with each other again after Krickitt suffered brain damage and memory loss following a car accident. Life as Kim and Krickitt Carpenter knew it was shattered beyond recognition on November 24, 1993. Two months after their marriage, a devastating car wreck left Krickitt with a massive head injury and...

This is the true love story of Joni and her husband of 30 years, Ken Tada. A love story showing what it truly means for a man and a woman to live in love ... in sickness and in health. Even the honeymoon wasn't easy. Did Ken realize what he was getting into when he proposed to Joni, a quadriplegic woman? As their marriage years moved on, Ken became increasingly overwhelmed by the never-ceasing demands of caring for Joni, who begins to experience chronic,...

"In a moment, Chris went from a talented eighteen-year-old college football player with a promising future to a quadriplegic with a 3 percent chance of ever moving or feeling anything below his neck, much less walking again...Determined to prove the doctors wrong, he pushed himself through grueling, daily workouts until four years later, he did the impossible. Chris walked across the stage to receive his college diploma with the help of Emily, the...

"In Anne Lamott's new book, she confronts the harsh truth that many of us grapple with every day: How can we recapture the confidence we once had in the world and in the future as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad news piles up every day -- from climate crises to threats to democracy to daily assaults on civility -- how can we mere mortals cope? Where, Lamott asks, "do we start to get our joy and hope and our faith...

"In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the danger of extremist faith, one of today's most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace-a revelatory memoir in the tradition of Educated and Hillbilly Elegy. Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found...