Philip Yancey's featured book Where The Light Fell: A Memoir is available here: See purchase options!

A Cry of Grief

That first day, I awoke at sunrise in their basement guest quarters. Soft morning light filtered through the trees as cheery birds announced the new day. I opened a book I had brought along for a Zoom book group: In This World of Wonders, by Nicholas Wolterstorff, a renowned Christian philosopher who had taught at … Read more

Dislabeled

My memoir, Where the Light Fell, tells the saga of my older brother, in whose shadow I grew up. Marshall was blessed with an off-the-charts IQ and preternatural musical gifts, including absolute pitch and an auditory memory that enabled him to play any music he’d ever heard. Everything changed in 2009 when a stroke cut … Read more

Faith, Deconstructed or Reconstructed

This blog is different from any of my others. It reproduces an exchange of emails I had with Bart Campolo about my memoir, Where the Light Fell.  Bart, son of the Baptist speaker and writer Tony Campolo, grew up in the heart of the evangelical subculture. He worked as an urban missionary and co-founded Mission … Read more

Our Soiled Legacy

Last month I visited the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. Founded by Bryan Stevenson, this stunning museum traces the history of racism in the U.S., beginning with the 12.7 million enslaved people who were forcibly brought from Africa, and proceeding through the Jim Crow era and the mass incarceration of Blacks today. Stevenson, a graduate … Read more

The Secret of Memoirs

When I decided to write a memoir, I went to the library and methodically made my way through every memoir on their shelves. For years I had been writing idea-driven books, and now I had to learn how to write pure narrative. A memoir should simply tell a story, without analysis or commentary. Before long, … Read more