Recommended by a valued friend as one of the books that had a profound effect on her life, I purchased and dove into The Awful Grace of God.

The target audience seems to be those who have recently lost a loved one. The personal, profound and insightful moments are those when the author shares inconceivable grief for losing his son. That said, the book meanders into an autobiographical memoir, a reflection on the author's life. He can spend a great deal of time on details (what food was brought by whom for Thanksgiving Day for example). I read in search of insight on the soul-strained struggle between loss and faith. While Thyne does weave this painful search into the narrative, and thus offers us insight, and solidarity for those in a similar struggle, significant portions of the book seem to be nostalgia/therapy for him, perhaps precious more time to spend with stories of his son and family in general.

That said, in the third or so of the book that does delve into the painful depths of reckoning grief and loss with faith, here are some of my favorite passages:

I was no longer connected to the God who intervenes to save us from harm... God does not rescue us from the mess and crush of life. Ever. Whatever else it means to have faith in Jesus and trust in the God Jesus trusted in, it means for certain that you get no way out of the human story.

I think Jesse's death got into both of us real deep. In me, it's layered like a slab of fatty tissue under my rib cage. It's why I still talk about it like I'm breathing with one lung.

There is no safety, for us or for the loved ones for whom we pray.

Like a dream that fades to inaccessibility moments after waking, this faith that once was my heart's home eluded me. ... But I also knew, as I slide toward sleep again, that the faith I would wind up with would not be the faith I'd lived with for over fifty years.

I had given up a belief in some glorified sense of myself and lived now, as clearly as I could, as faithfully as I could, from the inside out, letting what I believed was true about me express itself in my life with others.

Related: The Documentary film, "The Death of Two Sons: The Story of Amadou Diallo & Jesse Thyne."

Read more Book Reviews by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony.