kinderny 's review for:

Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

5.0

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I hadn’t intended on bringing this book on vacation- I’d already chosen and packed others. But the night before leaving I picked it up from the pile of books to be left behind and then I was hooked. (It went with me on vacation.) The story of a woman you became a minister (Unitarian), chaplain to Maine’s game wardens, after she is widowed. She tells personal stories about folks lost in the woods and the aftermath- happy when they are found, sad when only bodies are recovered. Book shows how she deals with loss and bereavement, her own and others, and how an appreciation of the natural world suffuses her experiences. She offers herself as “glad company for the journey”. Her conception of God is soft-focused and she describes hers as a “ministry of presence” for the wardens and those she comes in contact with when someone is lost. I liked this book a lot. It is not smarmy or goody-goody. It would be good with someone dealing with questions about “why bad things happen to good people?” and are not satisfied with “that it is all part of God’s plan”. Highly recommended.