Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir » (Unabridged)

It was while working through the grief and loss of early widowhood that Unitarian minister Kate Braestrup found her true calling. A law enforcement chaplain for the Maine Game Warden Service, she is the author of the award-winning memoir Here if You Need Me.

Kate Braestrup has been married and widowed, betrayed and betrothed, her personal spirituality constantly evolving along the way. How do God and love figure in our everyday lives and bonds with others? In MARRIAGE, AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY, she tackles these big questions with stories from her own relationships romantic and familial, platonic and professional much as Anne Lamott weaves her spirituality through her tales of parenthood. With the same compassion and warmth that made Here If You Need Me a New York Times bestseller, Braestrup engages readers fully, regardless of their path in life. She tells us about teaching sex education for her daughter's eighth-grade class, and the welcome embrace extended toward her adopted nephew from Africa. She introduces the essential concept that charity the key to all relationships is a whole-hearted selfless emotion, which is but a hint of God's immense devotion. Kate Braestrup's very human outlook gives anyone seeking to understand...

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

…the dialogue is deft and elegant, the scenery and back stories interesting and intense. The game wardens of Maine live on an icy edge between life and death; Braestrup evokes that world with skill.