A tender, unflinching memoir of faith, shame, and the quiet power of grace.
Hartmann offers a deeply personal reflection on finding God’s grace amid shame and despair in this compelling memoir. “I never liked the word ‘testimony’,” she admits early on. “I thought my story was too small to matter.” But as her life unfolds, she finds that even the quietest stories can reveal profound truths. What begins as a confession of fear and failure becomes a meditation on redemption and the slow, patient work of healing. Her childhood in a small Ontario town was marked by order without tenderness, rules without warmth. Her mother’s harsh words left invisible scars, and at school, ridicule taught her to disappear into silence. The weight of years spent unseen carried her, by twenty-three, to the edge of a cliff and a fleeting wish for release.
The memoir traces her gradual return to life through forgiveness, compassion, and spiritual rediscovery. A kind teacher’s encouragement, a moment of humiliation, a song shared in her family’s gospel quartet—each experience becomes a step toward grace. “Grace,” Hartmann writes, “is not perfection. It is surrender.” Interwoven free-verse poems act as prayers of renewal, capturing the beauty that emerges from brokenness. Hartmann’s writing is sincere, unsentimental, and deeply human. She neither glorifies suffering nor pretends that faith erases it, but shows how divine mercy and self-forgiveness can coexist with doubt. A tender and unsentimental account of grace hard-won, the book will resonate with anyone who has wrestled with guilt, grief, or the longing to be seen by God.
A thoughtful meditation on self-forgiveness and the enduring nearness of divine love.
Pub date June 4 2025
FriesenPress
ISBN 978-1038341242
Price $26.49 Hardcover, $15.49 Paperback, 4.99 Kindle edition