| With the trademark wisdom, humor, and honesty that made Anne Lamott's 
 book on faith, Traveling Mercies, a runaway bestseller, Plan B: Further 
 Thoughts on Faith is a spiritual antidote to anxiety and despair in 
 increasingly fraught times. The world is a more dangerous place than it was when Lamott's Traveling 
 Mercies was published five years ago. Terrorism and war have become the 
 new normal; environmental devastation looms even closer. And there are 
 personal demands on Lamott's faith as well: turning fifty; her mother's 
 Alzheimer's; her son's adolescence; and the passing of friends and time. 
  Fortunately for those of us who are anxious and scared about the state 
 of the world, whose parents are also aging and dying, whose children are 
 growing harder to recognize as they become teenagers, Plan B offers hope 
 in the midst of despair. It shares with us Lamott's ability to comfort, 
 and to make us laugh despite the grim realities. 
  Anne Lamott is one of our most beloved writers, and Plan B is a book 
 more necessary now than ever. It will prove to be further evidence that, 
 as The Christian Science Monitor has written, "Everybody loves Anne 
 Lamott." |