About the Book and Author

Now Featured in the Patheos Book Club
Stripped
At the Intersection of Cancer, Culture, and Christ
By Heather King

About the Book

Cancer—that unfair, indiscriminate, devastating disease—affects everyone at some point, whether a family member, a friend, or ourselves. It is a life-altering event of seismic proportions that forever impacts the landscape of our lives and, with raw force, pushes us to reorder priorities, reassess values, and perhaps rethink our faith. A diagnosed tumor forced Heather King to this crisis of mortality, to live at the crossroads of uncertainty, belief, fear, culture, and modern medicine. Only her faith in Christ, the Great Physician, helped her sort through the crippling uncertainty and choose her best way forward.

Stripped is a heartfelt expression of profound Catholic faith in the face of a cancer diagnosis. It chronicles King's informed decision not to blindly declare "war on her cancer" but to carefully examine all the medical evidence available and to choose to bring God into her decision making, even if that meant going against established medical advice.

The story of Stripped demonstrates how King's medical and spiritual journey led her to a place of freedom in Christ, where she could make an informed and faith-filled decision about her course of treatment and ultimately, accept her vulnerability. King learned, as we all must, that healing means so much more than simply "getting well."

About the Author

Heather King is a Catholic convert with several books, among them Parched; Redeemed; Shirt of Flame; Poor Baby; andStumble: Virtue, Vice and the Space Between. She writes a weekly column on arts and culture for The Tidings, lives in Los Angeles, and blogs at www.Heather-King.com.

Praise for "Stripped"

"Heather King's memoir of her journey with breast cancer is astonishing. It is painful, funny, compassionate, and unforgettable. Her honesty strips away all pretense and invites us into her mind and heart so that page by page we feel what she feels and understand what she comes to understand, that the potential for healing lies within ourselves. 'The real tragedy,' she writes, 'is to die with our truest song unsung – to die without recognizing that our suffering has meaning.' Stripped has profound spiritual meaning for anyone who reads it. It is amazing."

– Michael Leach, author of Why Stay Catholic? Unexpected Answers to a Life-Changing Question