Letter to a Man in the Fire: Does God Exist and Does He Care

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684856271
• ISBN13: 9780684856278
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 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.