cover image Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between

Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country In Between

Jeff Sharlet. Norton, $24.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-07963-0

In a wide-ranging collection of personal essays, Sharlet (The Family) provides various takes on faith in the form of profiles of a diverse group among the faithful and the faithless including a politician, a philosopher, an anarchist, a Yiddish novelist, and a group of evangelical teens. One essay follows a New Age healer who makes good business "cleansing" homes of bad vibes for a surprising number of New York City's real estate brokerages ("Sondra's healing services were no sillier or more profound than the idea that by dunking yourself in water, you experience death and resurrection"). The author sometimes slips into easy armchair philosophizing, but the sketches themselves offer nuanced and genuinely touching portraits of people from all walks, giving impressions of evangelicals in the throes of doubt as well as skeptics who want badly to be religious, but can't bring themselves to it. Although the essays have the theme of faith in common, the diversity of their individual subjects is less a virtue than a lack of focus that may disappoint some readers, while others may be interested in working to discern, or invent for themselves, the points of intersection among these essays. (Aug.)