Faith, Interrupted

"An intelligent, elegantly composed and open-hearted memoir. . . . Valuable, even instructive. . . . [Lax] is a writer of gentle precision and clarity." --Los Angeles Times

"Lax has written a steady, quiet love letter to a faith he has lost. . . . Sympathetic and engrossing." --The New York Times Book Review

"A poignant, sensitive and thoughtful memoir that illuminates the complexity of the phenomenon that we call faith." --Karen Armstrong, author of The Case for God

"Candid and heartful. . . . Faith, Interrupted resonates because Lax confronts questions common to believers everywhere, and he does it without pomposity, self-righteousness, or condescension." --America

"A gentle, rueful book . . . Lax's polished writing style and lack of assurance that he has all the answers are . . . definite pluses." --The Christian Science Monitor

"Heartfelt. . . . An honest and affecting memoir." --Boston Globe

"Lax is a good storyteller, careful with words and reflective of the many ways in which he has had to ponder the eternal questions. This is not a book that ends with faith restored, God in God's heaven and everything right with the world. But it is a book in which faith is taken seriously and, in the end, respected, even if the author cannot count himself among the faithful." --Faith Matters

"Insightful. . . . Although this book is as much about a fascinating life as it is about religion, it will appeal to a wide audience both for its engaging subject matter and first-rate writing." --National Catholic Reporter

"Vietnam . . . was at the core of the experience [Lax] recounts as part of his spiritual journey. . . . This book brings back with warmth, compassion and riveting detail what those days were like. . . . [A] deeply touching and personal meditation." --The Globe and Mail

"Spiritual memoirs rarely command the same interest to others as they do for their authors, but Lax's ability as a writer . . . makes his memoir an exception. . . . Lax's journey, told with a fine sense of narrative shape, is a kind of paradigm of the spiritual struggles of the first wave of the Baby Boom and will speak eloquently to that generation." --Library Journal

"Eric Lax's moving and riveting memoir reflects a Christian boy's struggle with faith and doubt, tradition and discovery. His encounters with other beliefs reflect as well his sense of empathy for, and solidity with, victims of destiny." --Elie Wiesel

"Jesus said that he who would save his life must lose it. Does that go for faith, too? Do you have to lose it to save it? If there is any single question that Eric Lax's luminously honest loss-of-faith memoir most clearly raises, this would be it. We live in two faith cultures. One culture only wants to hear how you lost your faith, the other only how you found it. But some of us have a foot in both cultures: dubious as plain believers, equally dubious as plain unbelievers. Eric Lax's unfinished, interrupted story is a good one for us, and for better or worse our name is Legion." --Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography

"In an age when it's so fashionable to mock religious belief, Eric Lax gives us a quiet, very moving meditation on his own spiritual trials and turns." --Paul Hendrickson, author, The Living and the Dead