The believer Encounters with the beginning, the end, and our place in the middle

Sarah Krasnostein

Book - 2022

"For Sarah Krasnostein, it begins with a Mennonite choir performing on a subway platform, a fleeting moment of witness that sets her on a fascinating journey to discover why people need to believe in absolute truths and what happens when their beliefs crash into her own. Some of the people Krasnostein interviews believe in things many people do not: ghosts, UFOs, the literal creation of the universe in six days. Some believe in things most people would like to: dying with dignity and autonomy; facing up to our transgressions with truthfulness; living with integrity and compassion. By turns devastating and uplifting, and captured in snapshot-vivid detail, these six profiles of a death doula, a geologist who believes the world is six tho...usand years old, a lecturer in neurobiology who spends his weekends ghost hunting, the fiancée of a disappeared pilot and UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her husband after suffering years of domestic violence, and Mennonite families in New York will leave you convinced that the most ordinary-seeming people are often the most remarkable and that deep and abiding commonalities can be found within the greatest differences. Vivid, unconventional, entertaining, and full of wonder, The Believer interweaves these stories with compassion and empathy, culminating in an unforgettable tour of the human condition that cuts to the core of who we are as people, and what we're doing on this earth"--

Saved in:

2nd Floor Show me where

121.6/Krasnostein
2 / 2 copies available
Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 121.6/Krasnostein Checked In
2nd Floor 121.6/Krasnostein Checked In
Subjects
Published
Portland, Oregon : Tin House 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Sarah Krasnostein (author)
Edition
First US edition
Physical Description
397 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 391-397).
ISBN
9781953534002
  • Prologue
  • Sarah
  • The Choir
  • Part I. Below
  • The Death Doula In The Beginning Paranormal
  • The Death Doula: Katrina & Annie
  • Paranormal: Vlad
  • In the Beginning: The Ark
  • The Death Doula: Annie
  • Paranormal: Vlad
  • In the Beginning: The Museum
  • The Death Doula: Annie
  • In the Beginning: Georgia
  • Paranormal: Vlad
  • The Death Doula: Annie
  • In the Beginning: Georgia
  • Paranormal: Rob
  • The Death Doula: Annie
  • In the Beginning: Andrew
  • Paranormal: The Vigil
  • The Death Doula: Annie & Katrina
  • Paranormal: Rob
  • The Death Doula: Annie & Katrina
  • In the Beginning: Tim
  • Paranormal: Vlad
  • The Death Doula: Katrina
  • In the Beginning: Georgia
  • The Death Doula: Katrina
  • Paranormal: Rob
  • The Death Doula: Katrina
  • Part II. Above
  • Halfway Home Theories of Flight The Kingdom of Heaven
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • Theories of Flight: Fred & Rhonda
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Sunday Service
  • Theories of Flight: Fred & Rhonda
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Loisann
  • Theories of Flight: Fred & Rhonda
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • Theories of Flight: Westall
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Becky
  • Theories of Flight: Don
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • Theories of Flight: Don & Colin
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Anthony
  • Theories of Flight: Ben
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • Theories of Flight: Don
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Becky & Tim
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • Theories of Flight: Jaimie & Aspasia
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Prayer Meeting
  • Theories of Flight: Jaimie & Aspasia
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: Tim
  • Theories of Flight: Jaimie & Aspasia
  • Coda: Here
  • The Death Doula: Katrina & Annie
  • Halfway Home: Lynn
  • The Kingdom of Heaven: The Choir
  • Select Bibliography
  • Acknowledgments
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Krasnostein (The Trauma Cleaner) delivers an illuminating meditation on the nature of belief and the quest for meaning. In six profiles of individuals and communities animated by a "longing for the unattainable," Krasnostein examines how belief can both strengthen and weaken interpersonal bonds. She explores supposedly haunted locales with paranormal investigators and talks with researchers at Kentucky's Creation Museum, who attempt to reconcile scientific principles with their belief in biblical inerrancy. Some of the most moving chapters focus on Annie, a Buddhist-trained "death doula" and trauma survivor, and Katrina, one of her patients. Elsewhere, Krasnostein profiles people who believe in extraterrestrials and UFOs; a community of Mennonites who have moved from rural Pennsylvania to the South Bronx to conduct urban mission work; and a woman who joined a lower Manhattan church after spending half her life imprisoned for the murder of her abusive husband. Throughout, Krasnostein is measured and respectful of her interviewees while being forthright about beliefs she finds unconvincing or even distasteful. The result is a compassionate and engrossing look at "how the stories we tell ourselves to deal with the distance between the world as it is and as we'd like it to be can stunt us or save us." (Mar.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

How does one confront the unknown and unknowable? That is the central question in Krasnostein's thoughtful meditation on humans' desire for certainty, security, and solace. Describing herself as an educated, urbane, "secular humanist" Jew, the author is generous in her investigation of diverse individuals who share a common trait: "longing for the unattainable." Her own search was ignited when she heard, by chance, a Mennonite choir singing at a Manhattan subway station. Transfixed by the sound and bond of community, she spent several months among Mennonites in the South Bronx, where she came to understand "their insistence on seeing a perfect pattern embroidered into the fabric of reality, constant confirmation--in the good and in the bad--of a loving presence." Belief in that loving presence, in intelligent design, and in the Bible as historical fact has attracted some for whom scientific evidence is unconvincing. As to the existence of God, they refuse "to accept absence of evidence as evidence of absence." At the Creation Museum in Kentucky, the Director of Research is a geologist. "He demonstrates," Krasnostein writes, "that it is possible simultaneously to consider Satan your personal spiritual adversary and to stay up to date with the Journal of Geology." The author also talked to a lecturer on the book of Genesis who has a doctorate in microbiology and believes Noah's Ark had room for young dinosaurs. A woman whose fiance disappeared on a solo flight after seeing unidentifiable lights in the sky; a man who clears haunted houses; an investigator into parapsychology: All find comfort in their "bespoke delusions." Krasnostein herself is no stranger to terror, confusion, and pain: Some of her family members were victims of the Holocaust; her mother left her when she was 10 "with explanations I did not understand at the time and do not understand now." Near the end, she writes, "I believe that we are united in the emotions that drive us into the beliefs that separate us." A sympathetic inquiry into the vicissitudes of faith. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.