With the trademark1 wisdom, humor, and honesty that made Anne Lamott's book on faith, Traveling Mercies, a runaway2 bestseller, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith is a spiritual antidote3 to anxiety and despair in increasingly fraught4 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 devastation5 looms6 even closer. And there are personal demands on Lamott's faith as well: turning fifty; her mother's Alzheimer's; her son's adolescence7; 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 Christian8 Science Monitor has written, "Everybody loves Anne Lamott."