New Release Spotlight: Rachel Held Evans

The emotions surrounding this book release are complicated and deep, but I’m so glad this day is finally here.

Rachel Held Evans began work on a project about living wholeheartedly in 2018. As with everything she did, Rachel put her whole self into it — researching and taking notes and formulating her outlines. We had several conversations about how excited she was to help people reconcile the idea of wholehearted living with the principles of Christian faith.

Rachel wrote about 20% of the book before she died, and her good friend Jeff Chu took on the task of finishing the manuscript by weaving it together with unpublished works she had written over the last few years. Daniel Evans wrote the Foreword, and Nadia Bolz-Weber provided an Afterword.

I’m not objective, but I have to say that the book is Rachel through-and-through. It’s beautiful, funny, deep, challenging, poetic, and worthy of many re-reads. I hope you get a chance to read it!

It has been a real odyssey to get to release day, full of heartbreak and mourning and moments of great joy as well. I’m so grateful for the partnership of Jeff Chu, Dan Evans and our editor Katy Hamilton at HarperOne.

Rachelle Gardner

Literary agent at Gardner Literary. Coffee & wine enthusiast (not at the same time) and dark chocolate connoisseur. I've worked in publishing since 1995 and I love talking about books!