ORDINARY LOSSES: Naming the Graces That Shape Us

One does not often run across an intelligent young essayist whose parents nurtured her, whose church shaped her, whose husband is devoted to her and whose God cares for the details of her life. What, one might wonder, could she possibly write about? Stanford, a 20-something editor at WaterBrook, says she is writing about loss—not searing anguish like widowhood or a terminal diagnosis, but cumulative small losses like leaving one's childhood home, or having to give up one good thing in order to choose another. Loss is indeed woven into every chapter, but it is just one thread in the larger picture: this is also a book about moving into adulthood. Now finished with grad school, married and beginning a career, she asks: "How do we stand on the edge of what we do not know, with only the love of God to hold us?" Stanford, who describes herself as "young and tired in an old and tired world," muses on such coming-of-age topics as relationships, passion, voice and identity, setting them in a magical framework of Christmas pageants and thunderstorms, best friends and wild bike rides, a beagle puppy and endless bedtime stories. In these literary essays, paradise is both lost and regained as the author gracefully explores her childhood intimation that "no mystery was too much to consider." (Oct.)