Walter Wangerin Jr.

In Preparing for Jesus, best-selling author and master storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. recreates verbal images of the events surrounding the Advent of Christ, offering a devotional journey into the heart of the Christmas season. Through rich detail and vivid images, these moving meditations make Christ's birth both intimate and immediate, allowing us to see Christmas from its original happening to its perennial recurrence in our hearts. Preparing for Jesus is sure to be a seasonal classic, treasured year after year.

Preparing for Jesus

For the first time, National Book Award-winner Walter Wangerin, Jr., turns his keen eye upon the craft of writing. By adding a lifetime of experience to the wisdom and examples of other writers (Shakespeare, Goethe, Berry, Chaucer, and many more), he builds for us an intricate picture of the craft and its subtlties. But in revealing his personal missteps, his own processes, and his own story, Wangerin provides lampposts for young writers as they embark on the long road toward mastery.Through practical advice, ethical considerations, and a master's definition of art itself, Wangerin draws us all closer to what it means to write--and to write well.

A Writer to Young Writers

Beate Not the Poore Desk

In Letters from the Land of Cancer Ebook, award-winning writer Walter Wangerin Jr. offers his profound insights into the greatest challenge we face: confronting our own mortality. “Shortly after the cancer had been diagnosed I began writing letters to the members of my immediate family, to relatives and to lifelong friends. The following book will consist mostly of those letters. They will invite you into my most intimate dancing with the cancer, even as that partner and I have over the last two years swung each other around the tiled floors of ballrooms and bathrooms. Dizzy still, and day by day, I sat and wrote: This is what I’m feeling right now. This is what I think.…” From afternoon to afternoon of radiation, Wangerin wrote about confronting his mortality, about living with the messiness of undone tasks and bodily weakness. He wrote about the medical procedures he endured, the wild mood swings that unbalanced his days, and the fragilities and strengths of the relationships that surrounded him. Letters from the Land of Cancer Ebook is made up of these writings. Cadenced within the letters are Wangerin’s eloquent meditations derived from his pastoral experiences with the faithful passage of death to life. Seldom has the great adventure of life and death been as beautifully presented as it is in this testimony to faith, love, and the shocking reality of hope.

Letters from the Land of Cancer

Many know the acclaimed author Walter Wangerin Jr., the storyteller who gave us the national bestseller The Book of the Duncow. In Wounds Are Where Light Enters, you’ll see how God’s love breaks into our lonely moments in unexplainable ways. Wangerin tells the stories of memorable characters facing the same struggles we all face as we try to trust in God’s faithfulness. Wounds Are Where Light Enters is a collection of stories that are warm, sometimes funny, sometimes not, but always taking unexpected turns to find the care of God in all the pathways of life. In them we find the grace that enables us to live with the answers we see and the answers we don’t see. In this collection we meet Arthur Bias, the retired black police officer who loves those who hate, Agnes Brill, the shrill piano teacher of patience, Junie Piper, precious of the homeless, Melvin, who honors his aging mother by honoring the little girl she has become, Lucian, the lover of thieves, and Blue Jack, the hammer of God. Readers will discover in these stories a powerful display of God’s working in the lives of all of us. They’ll find a place where he works even in the dark, even in the struggles, even in the wounds. This is the place where God’s light enters.

Stories of God's Intrusive Grace

Wounds Are Where Light Enters

From master storyteller Walter Wangerin, Jr. comes this familiar biblical saga told in a fresh, transfixing way. You’ll feel you’ve never heard it before! Melding historical accuracy with imaginative detail, Wangerin uses the biblical books of Judges and Ruth to explore themes of love, faith, grief and community set against a backdrop of war and political instability. The widow Naomi grieves the deaths of her two adult sons after the shocking murder of a beloved adopted daughter, while pondering her responsibilities toward her Moabite daughters-in-law. Ancient Israel is in chaos. When her daughter-in-law, Ruth, begs to return to Israel with Naomi, events are set in motion that will change the course of history. But wait…this isn’t the tame, flannel graph story you heard in Sunday School. In the tradition of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent and Elissa Elliott’s Eve: A Novel of the First Woman, Wangerin imbues his tale with strong female characters and an earthy realism that gives the timeless Old Testament narrative so much power. You’ll find echoes of contemporary issues throughout: deceit, heartbreak, loss, war, and, of course, the power of love. Naomi’s combined strength and tenderness becomes the pivot upon which a nation turns; her decisions ultimately lead to the founding of the family lineage of Jesus Christ. Breathtaking descriptions, shocking violence, and inspirational courage make this spellbinding novel by a beloved award-winning author a story you won’t soon forget. It’s the perfect novel for your book group, and a satisfying read for those who love thoughtful biblical fiction.

A Novel

Naomi and Her Daughters

No story has more significance than this: the death and resurrection of Jesus. But somehow the oft-repeated tale of Christ’s passion can become too familiar, too formalized, for us to experience its incredible immediacy. The meditations in Reliving the Passion, which received a Gold Medallion Award in 1993, follow the story as given in the gospel of Mark—from the moment when the chief priests plot to kill Jesus to the Resurrection. But these readings are more than a recounting of events; they are an imaginary reenactment, leading the reader to re-experience the Passion or perhaps see it fully for the very first time. As only a great storyteller can, Walter Wangerin enables the reader to see the story from the inside, to discover the strangeness and wonder of the events as they unfold. It’s like being there. In vivid images and richly personal detail, Wangerin helps us recognize our own faces on the streets of Jerusalem; breathe the dark and heavy air of Golgotha; and experience, as Mary and Peter did, the bewilderment, the challenge, and the ultimate revelation of knowing the man called Jesus. “The story gets personal for every reader,” writes Wangerin, “for this is indeed our story, the story whereby we personally have been saved from such a death as Jesus died. “No, there is not another tale in the world more meaningful than this—here is where we all take our stands against sin and death and Satan, upon this historical, historic event. I consider it a holy privilege to participate in it retelling. “Read this book slowly. Read it with a seeing faith. Walk the way with Jesus. We, his followers of later centuries, do follow even now. Read, walk, come, sigh, live. Live! Rise again!”

Meditations on the Suffering, Death, and the Resurrection of Jesus as Recorded in Mark.

Reliving the Passion

Master storyteller Walter Wangerin Jr. shares the story of the Bible from beginning to end as you've never read it before, retold with exciting detail and passionate energy. “. . . a feat of imagination and faith.” —Philip Yancey, award-winning author The Book of God reads like a novel, dramatizing the sweep of biblical events, bringing to life the men and women of this ancient book in vivid detail and dialogue. From Abraham wandering in the desert to Jesus teaching the multitudes on a Judean hillside, this award-winning bestseller follows the biblical story in chronological order. Priests and kings, apostles and prophets, common folk and charismatic leaders—individual stories offer glimpses into an unfolding revelation that reaches across the centuries to touch us today.

Walter Wangerin Jr.

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