Letter to a Man in the Fire

By Reynolds Price

Book Overview

Does God Exist and Does He Care?
In April 1997 Reynolds Price received an eloquent letter from a reader of his cancer memoir, A Whole New Life. The correspondent, a young medical student diagnosed with cancer himself and facing his own mortality, asked these difficultQuestions. The two began a long-distance correspondence, culminating in Price's thoughtful response, originally delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary, and now expanded onto the printed page as Letter to a Man in the Fire.
Harvesting a variety of sources -- diverse religious traditions, classical and modern texts, and a lifetime of personal experiences, interactions, and spiritual encounters -- Price meditates on God's participation in our fate. With candor and sympathy, he offers the reader such a rich variety of tools to explore these questions as to place this work in the company of other great tetsaments of faith from St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis.
Letter to a Man in the Fire moves as much as it educates. It is a rare combination of deep erudition, vivid prose, and profound humanity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684856271
• ISBN13: 9780684856278
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

A Good Guide

As one who watched his own father, a retired minister, die a horrible, lingering death this past year after 15-year battles with cancer, heart disease and diabetes, I found Mr. Price's "Letter" to be both thought-provoking and helpful in my own search for answers to the questions posed in the book's title -- more helpful than my re-readings of Ecclesiastes and Job were.No one in this life, however faithful, can be absolutely sure that he has THE answers. All anyone can truly have is a good guess about directions in which to look for those answers. I have found Mr. Price to be a good guide partly because he has traveled farther down that solitary road than most of us and has come back with the willingness to report his findings in the clearest voice that anyone can have under such circumstances.

A Song

Surely God must exist, for in each, of so many of us, he has bestowed such innate characteristics that set us apart from the rest of our brothers and sisters in this crowded world. In Reynolds Price He has offered an unequaled ability to lend music to written word -few writers can turn references into poetry, knowledge into song. This is an eloquent gift, a vivifying endeavor to bring a personal perspective to a query that can only be forever pondered. The spark of Jim Fox's stoic plea, in the face of his own mortality, has ignited a Fire. It is our fortune that its mesmerizing flames: a glimpse of a courageous tale, a sense of duty, and a staggering theological knowledge, have been shared and are certain to linger in our minds and hearts. Beautiful.