• download
a sample PDF of stumbling toward faith.
(please note that this could be triggering to others who have been abused. adobe acrobat reader is required to read the sample.)
• reviews & interviews
buy the book
Stumbling Toward Faith has officially gone out of print. I bought the remainder stock from Zondervan, and am selling them for people who still want the book. You can paypal $15 dollars per book to my paypal account (renee @ ianua . org) (I now accept credit card payments as well, so it's a great time to buy those 10 or so copies you want to give to friends!) or email me for snail mail info.
what people are saying ...
"This is the first work of an immensely gifted young writer from whom, pray God, we will receive many, many more words marshaled to her strange beat and through whom, pray God, we will gain purchase over many more demons and wild things, caught momentarily in her verbal lens ...this book is .. a proto-myth...a piece of poetry in transit. It is the autobiography of the phoenix retold in today's circumstances, but still emergent out of cruel fires."
—Phyllis Tickle,
from the foreward
... "Stumbling Toward Faith is a story we need to read - not just because
Renee Altson is a gifted writer, not just because her life is a Java
lamp of pain, redemption and vulnerability, not just because it moves
your heart, your head and soul to a place they often feel scared to even
consider. All of that is true, but what seeps through every page of
Stumbling Toward Faith is the hum of creation, destruction and
redemption of what it means to vulnerable to God. Tori Amos sings about
this hum:
Will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky fall
will you even tell her if you decide to make the sky
Read Stumbling Toward Faith and let your soul know the anguish of
Renee's sky falling and joy of God making fireworks in the skies over
Renee Altson's extraordinary life."
—Bob Carlton,
blogger at the corner ...
"This book took my breath away. It balances story, faith-musings, and gorgeous poetry."
—Mark Oestreicher,
president, youth specialties
"Exquisitely written, heart wrenchingly candid, and profoundly hopeful, Stumbling Toward Faith is a groundbreaking work of extraordinary courage and strength. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Renee Altson chronicles her journey out of the horrific abuse of her past to her first cautious belief in God’s “plans to give [her] hope and a future” … and, in so doing, she gifts her readers with an unforgettable story of the Love that will not let us go."
—Karla Yaconelli
what i think about it all
stumbling toward faith was written out of my attempt to make sense of what happened to me. it doesn't go into the whole of my story, and sometimes there are only occasional dips into the depths of my pain. ultimately, though, it is an attempt at an apology; a reconciliation of my faith, my desire to believe, the hope of a love that i can not understand.
it's a difficult book, but i believe that it is the creation of something beautiful out of the rubble
of my life.
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