Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith

"Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer." -- ★ Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A riverflow of a book that gives voice to the reality of the modern world, which is multiphonic, skeptical, but also longing for deep meaning." -- Phil Cousineau, Author of "The Art of Pilgrimage"

A journalist's pilgrimage through the religions of the world in search of a way to believe in God - or Something -- in our globalized, secularized world.

An inveterate doubter for most of her adult life, award-winning journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall embarks upon a quest to find a way to believe in God in the twenty-first century. The result is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, which details her search for the Divine in the lives of diverse Americans - from a fundamentalist Christian to a progressive Muslim to a Buddhist monk.

In Wrestling with God, Newhall presents the deeply personal stories of a score of Americans she encountered on her journey-believers, skeptics, contemplatives, activists. She also reports on the progress of her own rocky spiritual journey and how ultimately she arrives at a place of surrender to the universe's enduring mystery.

Wrestling with God includes a foreword by Don Lattin, who covered the religion beat for the San Francisco Chronicle and is the author of Distilled Spirits and The Harvard Psychedelic Club. Among the storytellers of Wrestling with God are:


An atheist who conducts an experiment on GodA Buddhist who embarks upon a 650-mile bowing pilgrimage up the coast of CaliforniaA World War II veteran who shouts angry words at God as he endures a forced march across Germany
A Nobel laureate who believes that science, like religion, requires faithA Congregationalist minister who questions God's goodness