Into the Depths: A Journey of Loss and Vocation

In this moving, psalmic memoir, Funk suggests that tragedy—a flash flood in Bolivia in 1984, through which she lived but four died—at its core may be beyond words. Nevertheless, she describes it in stirring detail. More importantly, she diagnoses what happened to her, body and soul, in the decades afterwards. Funk, a Benedictine nun, begins with her Midwestern upbringing, her early entrance into religious life, its repressions and her depressions, and her career as a teacher and a leader in the Catholic Church. The businesslike autobiography in the first part contrasts keenly with her forceful, faithful telling of the flood and the funerals in the second. She marries the two styles—prosaic and dramatic—in the last section, an analysis that ranges from living with post-traumatic stress, that is, living beyond death, to living with the Psalms and knowledge, that is, living in relationship with God. She does not waste time on maudlin sentiment, nor space on "what if?" She says simply, "I was brought low... and given life." (Mar.)