"What happens when the center cannot hold? With great empathy
and infectious alarm, Nan Mooney charts the travails of America's middle
class in this important book." —Anya Kamenetz, author of Generation
Debt
"We hear a lot about the runaway wealth of American professionals.
In this important book, Nan Mooney reminds us that most have no such
luck. Working in jobs they love provides a sense of moral worth but
doesn't cover the bills for teachers, legal aid lawyers, practicing
artists, and others. Something has gone wrong in America, and this book
gives us a grip on the crisis." —Katherine Newman, coauthor
of The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America and
the Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at
Princeton
"If you're wondering why, in our age of plenty, the financial
treadmill keeps moving faster and faster for America's increasingly
educated—and increasingly insecure—middle class, you owe it
to yourself to read this book. It's all here: the big trends, the compelling
portraits, the ideas for personal and political change, and the call
to arms we so desperately need." —Jacob S. Hacker, author
of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families,
Health Care and Retirement and How You Can Fight Back
"A deeply affecting mosaic of stories, Souls in the Hands of
a Tender God unveils the tragedy of homelessness, mental illness,
and estrangement, and reveals the power of hospitality and accompaniment
in the daunting journey toward home, healing, and belonging. You're
unlikely to find a better portrayal of what it means to truly love your
neighbor as yourself." —Ken Kraybill, training specialist,
National Health Care for the Homeless Council
"Hall's memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her
close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age
of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance
. . . Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding
and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind,
have made us who we are." —Francine Prose, O Magazine
"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir . . . exquisite."
—Robert Braile, Boston Globe
"Red bird is an emblem of passion in a frozen world, and a sign
of Oliver's own resurgence of love and hope after the profound grief
of her last collection, Thirst … As piercingly observant
as ever in this substantial and forthright collection, Oliver is rhapsodic.
But she is also wry, caustic, and elegiac in critiquing our habit of
violence, 'the debris of progress,' and the cruel fate of rivers, polar
bears, and all the wild places and animals we've endangered, and from
which we still have so much to learn." —Donna Seaman, Booklist
Beacon Press is a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association
