NOVA: Lost Tombs of Notre DameReviewed by Sam GuitierrezIn 2019, the world watched in horror as the 800-year-old Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris burned. The moment its iconic spire collapsed into the massive flames below is an image seared into our collective memory. Thankfully, firefighters could ext
Septuagenarians are having a moment with the success of Only Murders in the Building, starring Martin Short and Steve Martin, and Matlock, starring Kathy Bates.Now we can add 76-year-old Ted Danson to the list of 70-somethings saving some of their best work for their later years. In A Man on the Ins
Inspired by her memoir, The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage, and a Girl Saved by Bees, author Meredith May’s debut children’s picture book relates the story of a young girl who lives with her grandparents after her parents separate. The girl spends most of her time with Grandpa, a beekeeper who
A Bend in the River had me at its voice-over start. A winsome Irish accent with fine word use fastened me to the film—along with the sweep of County Tyrone land. This movie asks what happens to a famous novelist who is blocked before answering, “Return to your roots—and your wounds.”Irishman Matt Do
Twelve-year-old Will hates living in Texas in the only place he’s ever called home, and all he dreams of is leaving and seeking adventure. His father is a sharecropper on 20 acres of cotton. Most of the earnings are unjustly pocketed by the landowner.Father and Grandpa had left Louisiana and gone we
Doug Tjapkes has been playing piano and organ in worship in the CRC for 70 years! He was encouraged to sit down at the piano in his home and record a number of hymns that he has loved over the years. At age 88 Tjapkes plays freestyle, changing keys and chords as he plays through hymns and gospel son
In 1948, 30-year-old Mercy Windsor, a famous Hollywood actress, has reached the end of her rope. When Mercy stands up against an injustice that almost caused a tragedy, she learns that her career has been terminated, one more loss of home and belonging in a life too familiar with brokenness.Wanting
Expressing grief makes us vulnerable. We might be misunderstood. We might be attacked. Some people withdraw into themselves. Others become abrasive and push people away so that no one will sense the hurt that wants so desperately to be let out.In A Quiet Place: Day One (a prequel to A Quiet Place),
Author Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez begins her insightful, loving critique of the current state of the church, institutional and organic, by asserting, “It’s no secret that the Body of Christ is in a crisis. ... We are experiencing intense division, scandals, people walking away from the faith, and d
In his introduction to The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary, editor Esau McCaulley explains the circumstances that led to the creation of this significant resource for the Christian church: “I was sitting in a coffee shop, books taking up too much space on the tiny table in fro
Young Brian is excited to go to the library with his mother. He zooms and zigs and zags past book shelves, a crawling baby, and a knitting grandmother till he reaches his favorite reading chair. As he flips through the pages of a book, he looks up and sees an elderly man whom he thinks is his grandf
In 2019, the world watched in stunned horror as the famous 800-year-old cathedral Notre Dame in Paris burned. The moment the iconic spire collapsed into a fire-licked and ember-filled void is seared into our collective memory. Thankfully, firefighters could extinguish the fire and preserve much of t
Good DirtBy Charmaine WilkersonPerfect for book clubs, this wise and enthralling novel from the author of Black Cake weaves between the present—a young woman mysteriously jilted at the altar—and her ancestors’ past as enslaved people paving the way for her with their courage and ingenuity. I didn’t
The thought of tackling a classic novel can be intimidating. We get flashbacks to those English classes where we were forced to read dense, complicated tomes with turns of phrase that haven’t been commonplace in the past 200 years. And then, we were supposed to identify the themes and explain what w
In recent years, evangelical Christianity has been on trial for its alleged complicity with slavery and racism. A puzzling question remains: Why didn’t Christian leaders question the institution of slavery for almost 1,800 years? This timely book calls three historical figures to the witness stand a
In the small town of Stoney Ridge, Penn., Dr. Ruth Stoltzfus—known as Dok to her community—views her patients’ illnesses and injuries through the lens of their whole being: body, emotions, and soul. Committed to seeing her Amish and non-Amish patients at her office, she also continues to make house
Note: This review was written before the 2025 plane crashes in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.It’s December 21, 1988, and the skies over Lockerbie, Scotland, are dark. A boy wheels his sister’s bike to the neighbor’s to be fixed. Christmas lights twinkle. The event that will change everything hasn
“The city of Philadelphia wasn’t what it claimed to be.” So begins author Ashton Lattimore’s riveting debut novel. Set in 1837, All We Were Promised narrates the intersecting lives of three Black women in vastly differing circumstances as they navigate the cruel realities of a city that was “the sel
Matin is a service of morning prayer. Musician Jess Ray has used that term to name a series of meditative albums that she recorded between first light and dawn. The latest, Turn, begins with a sparse rendition of “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” and seamlessly segues into a series of original songs. “I N
When author Jasmine Holmes first encountered Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, she distrusted the narratives because of their positive depictions of slavery, which, she assumed, were influenced by the white interviewers’ biases. The