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Where the Light Fell: A Memoir Kindle Edition

by Philip Yancey (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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In this searing meditation on the bonds of family and the allure of extremist faith, one of today’s most celebrated Christian writers recounts his unexpected journey from a strict fundamentalist upbringing to a life of compassion and grace—a revelatory memoir that “invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

“Searing, heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason

Raised by an impoverished widow who earned room and board as a Bible teacher in 1950s Atlanta, Philip Yancey and his brother, Marshall, found ways to venture out beyond the confines of their eight-foot-wide trailer. But when Yancey was in college, he uncovered a shocking secret about his father’s death—a secret that began to illuminate the motivations that drove his mother to extreme, often hostile religious convictions and a belief that her sons had been ordained for a divine cause.

Searching for answers, Yancey dives into his family origins, taking us on an evocative journey from the backwoods of the Bible Belt to the bustling streets of Philadelphia; from trailer parks to church sanctuaries; from family oddballs to fire-and-brimstone preachers and childhood awakenings through nature, music, and literature. In time, the weight of religious and family pressure sent both sons on opposite paths—one toward healing from the impact of what he calls a “toxic faith,” the other into a self-destructive spiral.

Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post–World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and Sixties-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear.

“I truly believe this is the one book I was put on earth to write,” says Yancey. “So many of the strands from my childhood—racial hostility, political division, culture wars—have resurfaced in modern form. Looking back points me forward.”

From the Publisher

Publishers Weekly says “Yancey’s piercing account invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Where the Light Fell is in many ways a classic spiritual autobiography tracing one man’s conversion from cynic to believer. But it’s more. It’s a searing family story as revelatory as gothic Southern fiction. It’s an exposé. It’s a social critique. It’s a tragedy. It’s a tale of redemption . . . The memoir itself is an answer to the question that looms throughout: What do we do with the burdens, sins, and pain of our past?”—Christianity Today

“Searing. Heartrending . . . This stunning tale reminds us that the only way to keep living is to ask God for the impossible: love, forgiveness, and hope.”—Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason

“Philip Yancey is not just one of my favorite Christian writers, but one of my favorite writers, period. He is fearless in addressing the toughest questions and hardest times, the crucifixions we will all know during this life, the hope and shapes and colors of resurrection.”—Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author of Dusk Night Dawn

“An illuminating autobiography that could very well have been titled The Philip Yancey Philip Never Knew. Delicate, tender, humorous, and brutally honest, Where the Light Fell accomplishes quite significantly as the author’s biography, but also as a biography of our nation grappling with her faith. At once pain-filled and healing, through this book we come to know a ‘trickster’ who falls into the ‘mysterious power of words,’ revealing the cracks and fragments of our culture at large, but reminding us afresh how grace can ultimately prevail over us.”—Makoto Fujimura, founder of the International Arts Movement, artist, and author of Silence and Beauty and Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

“[A] graceful, illuminating memoir, a gift to [Yancey’s] readers.”—Booklist

“[A] gripping memoir . . . Yancey’s eloquent descriptions of coming to faith and his exacting self-examination make this a standout. Exploring the corrosive role of fear in faith, Yancey’s piercing and painful account invites comparison to Hillbilly Elegy.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Where the Light Fell could be a Faulkner novel, with racist preachers, off-kilter parenting, tormented siblings, and religious hypocrisy right and left. It’s not an overstatement to say that this stunning memoir might be the miracle we’ve all waited for. I believed every word.”—Carolyn S. Briggs, author of Higher Ground

About the Author

Philip Yancey is the author of twenty-five books, including The Jesus I Never Knew, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, and Soul Survivor: How Thirteen Unlikely Mentors Helped My Faith Survive the Church. Yancey’s books have garnered thirteen Gold Medallion Book Awards from Christian publishers and booksellers. He currently has more than seventeen million books in print and has been published in over fifty languages worldwide. Yancey worked as a journalist and freelance author in Chicago for some twenty years, editing the youth magazine Campus Life while also contributing to a wide variety of publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today. He and his wife, Janet, live in the foothills of Colorado.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.

—Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Chapter 1

The Secret

Not until college do I discover the secret of my father’s death.

My girlfriend, who will later become my wife, is making her first visit to my home city of Atlanta, in early 1968. The two of us stop by my grandparents’ house with my mother, have a snack, and retire to the living room. My grandparents sit in matching recliners across from the upholstered couch where Janet and I are seated. A television plays softly in the background, tuned to the ever-boring Lawrence Welk Show.

Normally my eighty-year-old grandfather snores through the program, waking just in time to pronounce, “Swellest show I ever saw!” Tonight, though, everyone is wide-awake, fixing their attention on Janet. Philip’s never brought a girl over—this must be serious.

Conversation proceeds awkwardly until Janet says, “Tell me something about the Yancey family. I’m so sorry I’ll never get to meet Philip’s father.” Thrilled by her interest, my grandmother rummages in a closet to fetch some photo albums and family scrapbooks. As pages turn, Janet tries to keep straight all the names and faces flashing before her. This ancestor fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. That distant cousin died of a black widow spider bite. Her father succumbed to the Spanish flu.

Suddenly a folded clipping from The Atlanta Constitution flutters from the album to the floor, newsprint yellowed with age. When I lean forward to retrieve it, a photo that I’ve never seen catches my eye.

A man lies on his back in a hospital bed, his body pitifully withered, his head propped up on pillows. Beside him, a smiling woman bends over to feed him with a spoon. Right away I recognize her as a slimmer, youthful version of my mother: the same prominent nose, the same mass of dark, curly hair, an early trace of the worry lines that now crease her forehead.

The photo caption stops me cold: “Polio Victim and Wife Spurn ‘Iron Lung.’ ” I hold the paper closer and block out the buzz of family chitchat. The printed words seem to enlarge as I read.

A 23-year-old Baptist minister, who was stricken with polio two months ago, has left the “iron lung” in which he was placed at Grady Hospital because, as he put it, “I believe the Lord wanted me to.”

The Rev. Marshall Yancey, of 436 Poole Creek Rd., Hapeville, said about 5,000 people from Georgia to California were praying for his recovery and he was confident he would be well “before too long.”

He signed his own release from Grady against medical advice.

Those three words, against medical advice, send a chill through my body, as though someone has poured ice water down my spine. Sensing the change, Janet looks at me quizzically, her left eyebrow arched so high that it touches her bangs. I slide the clipping over so that she, too, can read it.

The newspaper reporter quotes a Grady Memorial Hospital doctor, who warns that removal from the respirator “might do serious harm,” followed by a chiropractor who claims the patient is “definitely improving” and may begin walking in six weeks if he continues their course of treatment.

Then the article turns to my mother:

Mrs. Yancey, the minister’s young, blue-eyed wife, explained why her husband left Grady:

“We felt like he should be out of that iron lung. Lots of people who believe in faith healing are praying for him. We believe in doctors, but we believe God will answer our prayers and he will get well.”

I glance at the newspaper’s date: December 6, 1950. Nine days before my father’s death. I flush red.

Janet has finished reading. Why didn’t you tell me about this? she asks with her eyes. I mime surprise: Because I didn’t know!

Dozens, scores of times I have heard the saga of my father’s death, how a cruel disease struck down a talented young preacher in his prime, leaving a penniless widow with the noble task of wresting some meaning from the tragedy. My growing-up years were dominated, even straitjacketed, by a vow she made—that my brother and I would redeem that tragedy by taking on the mantle of our father’s life.

Never, though, have I heard the backstory of what led to his death. When I replace the clipping in the scrapbook, I find on the facing page a similar account from my mother’s hometown newspaper The Philadelphia Bulletin. Quite by accident I am discovering that this man whom I never knew, a saintly giant looming over me all these years, was a sort of holy fool. He convinced himself that God would heal him, and then gambled everything—his career, his wife, his two sons, his life—and lost.

I feel like one of Noah’s sons confronting his father’s nakedness. The faith that exalted my father and gained him thousands of supporters, I now grasp, also killed him.

As I lie in bed that night, memories and anecdotes from childhood flash before me, now appearing in a different light. A young widow lying on her husband’s grave, sobbing as she offers her two sons to God. That same widow, my mother, pausing to pray, “Lord, go ahead and take them unless . . .” before seeking help as her sons thrash convulsively on the floor. Her rage that erupts when my brother and I seem to stray from our appointed destiny.

An awful new realization hits me. My brother and I are the atonement to compensate for a fatal error in belief. No wonder our mother has such strange notions of parenting, and such fierce resistance to letting us go. We alone can justify our father’s death.

After chancing upon the newspaper article, I have many conversations with Mother. “That was no life for him—paralyzed, in that machine,” she says. “Imagine a grown man who can’t even swat a fly off his nose. He desperately wanted out of Grady Hospital. He begged me not to let anyone take him back there.” Her reasoning is sound, though unsatisfying.

“I get that,” I protest, “but why was I never told about the faith healing? The most important fact of my father’s death I learned by chance, from a scrapbook. You invited a reporter into the room, and a photographer. You told them the truth, but not my brother and me!”

Once exposed, the mystery of my father’s death acquires a new, compulsive power. When I start asking around, a family friend confides in me, “So many of us were dismayed at their decision, moving your father from a well-equipped hospital to a chiropractic center.”

I feel as if someone has twisted the kaleidoscope of our family myth, scattering the shards to form a wholly new design. I share the news with my renegade brother, who has incurred Mother’s wrath by joining Atlanta’s hippie counterculture. He immediately jumps to the conclusion that she deprived us of a father by “pulling the plug” on her own husband. A chasm opens in our little family that likely will never be bridged.

I don’t know what to think. I know only that I have been misled. The secret is now out, and I determine to investigate and write it down someday, as truthfully as I can.

Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08SJRN95Z
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Convergent Books (October 5, 2021)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 5, 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1285 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 299 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #47,217 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #12 in Biographies of Christianity
- #167 in Religious Leader Biographies
- #261 in Memoirs (Kindle Store)

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4.8 2,713 ratings

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Philip Yancey

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I started my career working as an Editor and then Publisher for Campus Life magazine. During those ten years I learned journalistic skills (there's no tougher audience than teenagers), but every year it seemed I wrote fewer and fewer words. In 1980 my wife and I moved to downtown Chicago where I began a career as a freelance writer. (She has worked as a social worker and hospice chaplain--which gives me plenty of material to write about!) We lived there until 1992, when we moved to the foothills of Colorado.

I've written over 30 books, most of them still in print, thankfully. Three of them I coauthored with Dr. Paul Brand, who influenced me more than any single person. A recent book, "Fearfully and Wonderfully: The Marvel of Bearing God's Image" is a revised compilation of that content. My other favorites include "Soul Survivor" and "Reaching for the Invisible God" because both of them forced me to dig deep and get personal.

I had two new books released in 2021. “A Companion in Crisis” offers a paraphrase of John Donne’s ‘Devotions’ with commentary and application to our current suffering. My long-awaited memoir, “Where the Light Fell” gives readers a backstory of sorts, revealing the secrets of my turbulent childhood and teen years, and the impact on my written work.

I'm a pilgrim, still 'in recovery' from a bad church upbringing, searching for the possibility of a faith rooted in grace instead of fear. I feel overwhelming gratitude that I can make a living writing about the questions that interest me.

Official Facebook page: www.facebook.com/PhilipYancey

More details, including blog entries, book sales, and release notices: philipyancey.com

SUBSCRIBE to my monthly blog: https://bit.ly/PhilipYanceyBlog

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Illianagirl

LOVE THIS BOOK!!!

Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2023

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Book is entertaining, while making a great point. I've only read the first half so far, but Mr. Yancey writes so well, that I'm sure the rest will be an excellent read. He entertains, while still making great information for the Lord! I haven't read a Philip Yancey book yet that wasn't even better than I hoped. Love, love all his books. I am enjoying reading about his childhood and the background that made him the great writer that he is.

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Barbara Sutton

Grace Arrives, Even When the Church Fails

Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2023

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It is the rare book which prompts me to write a review immediately upon finishing the last page.

Yancey's Where the Light Fell is one of those books. It is a heartbreaking read in many ways... to learn about the tragic early death of his father, and the untold strain that put on his mother. What is harder is to learn about how his mother's religious beliefs turned her into someone who treated her children with intense anger. It's hard to fathom, isn't it? The level of abuse Philip and his older brother, Marshall experienced at the hand of their mother is staggering, all this while they were embedded in fundamentalist churches and Bible schools. The paths of Philip and Marshall diverge once they head off to college, to different Bible based schools. Marshall, the musical genious, and Philip, the skeptic, have very different experiences.

It's heartbreaking to watch Marshall sink lower and lower into despair. We gradually learn that he is unable to recover from the rejection and hatred his mother heaped on him.. She even went so far as to curse him. Marshall moved towards drugs and the free life style of the hippy era as a means of escape. Further on in adulthood, he is able to use his musical ear to have success as a piano tuner. And for some years he has a rewarding marriage. But after a stroke, his despair surfaces again, revolving around the abuse he experienced at the hands of his mother. I come away feeling that his pain and suffering is the second great tragedy of this memoir.

As Philip writes about his own journey, he's quite honest about his skeptism toward the fundamentalist beliefs he's been exposed to all his life. He's willing to be the outcast, the black sheep, both at home and at college. Still, in the midst of all this, the grace of God creeps in, and he begins to turn back to a faith in God and Jesus. It's a hard won turning... while he continues to wrestle with deep questions about suffering and about what kind of life God wants for the human family. For me, it's the fact that his transformed faith IS so hard won, that makes this story powerful. There's nothing superficial or glib here. Philip agonizes over the decline of his brother. He attempts to reach his mother, with minimal response. So this book doesn't have a neat ending, with everything reconciled and tied up with neat bows. It's a tale of our human failings and weaknesses.

Yet it is also a story of Grace, of how the light and compassion of God breaks through Philip's shell of skepticism, and draws him back. Philip's story is the miracle of this memoir... that God can bring light into such darkness.

Philip, as most of us know, has gone on to write many books which deal with the hard questions of faith, church and grace. Personally, I'm grateful that he has written this memoir. It touches on some of my own challenges, such as growing up with an angry, abusive mother. I also escaped to a Christian college, which fortunately was a healthy place for me to explore my own questions about my faith. The light can indeed come into dark places.

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Gregory Adaka MD

The most beautiful book I've read this year

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2021

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I Had never realised that Yancey had such humble beginnings. His insight, his intellectualism and his articulate delivery give the impression that he has upper-middle class roots.
But no. He lived in a "trailer" for years as he grew up.
In this book, he has been so very vulnerable in the description of his life.
There are some heart-wrenching details, so if you're the type, have some Kleenex handy. But these very personal anecdotes are not gratuitous. They seem to be in the book because the story necessitates it. Without them, the resulting sanitised version would be inauthentic.
I recognise something I see in myself. That one is able to witness so much wrong in the church - to see the evil perpetrated by Christians - and yet believe that God is - and that God is love. That one is able to witness all that Yancy did and still defend the faith publicly in one's speaking and writing.
But its not all grim. Far from it. Yancey has an ability to draw humour out of that which we usually consider routine, everyday life.
The chapter on the South - especially if you listen to the Audible version - is well worth the price of the whole book. He had me laughing alone in my car.

As Yancey grew and matured, he recognised the lie he had been brought up in. He found the truth about racial inequality and the fallacy behind the "lost cause". It begs a question that I've asked so many times in the past, when I encounter people like Phil Yancey. The question is, how is it that they are able to see the obvious evil for what it is, when so many others of his demographic are simply blind to it?

All in all, this has been one of the most moving books I've read. It's now no wonder to me that Philip Yancey has written so many books that ask the most challenging questions. Books that explain the pain in life, as well as the grace of God and the joy in living.

23 people found this helpful

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Alan

Excellent memoir

Reviewed in Canada on January 20, 2024

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Gives great background and insight into the author's other writing.

One person found this helpful

RoverT

Good value hard back.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 26, 2024

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Price was good and delivery quick. Gift for a friend who is v happy.

Sean Sokhi

Sometimes the deepest wounds to be forgiven are by Family.

Reviewed in India on February 28, 2022

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Philip Yancey is a masterful author and while well renowned in Christian circles for his writings on Theology, his books are meant for all audiences regardless of creed or nation. Apart from "What's So Amazing About Grace", I consider this to be his best book till date. It is autobiographical and some of the chapters when he speaks about his and his brother's wounds, make you want to weep. But there is much cause for hope, and faith, and joy through all the struggles and the haze while Yancey tries to always bring his journey back homeward. Anyone who has ever been hurt or wounded by family or those closest to them, must read this book. It is time, effort and heart sense well spent.

One person found this helpful

Kastu puru

extraordinary true story

Reviewed in Australia on April 22, 2024

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Grace & love of God portrayed so vividly in a very dysfunctional broken family, Church, Bible College and subsequent life. The expressive power of God redeeming love and embrace of his grace is portrayed beautifully in simple but telling words. I’m so grateful to the God he writes about I love him too.

Debra Stockdale-Smith

Brilliant

Reviewed in Canada on July 13, 2023

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Philip Yancey has composed a highly compelling autobiography in describing and unraveling the details of those forces which has shaped his own faith in a Christ who is nothing like the one, at times, portrayed in our churches. Please read this book if for no other reason then to challenge or affirm your own faith journey and to discover better how Christ’s power to redeem a life wrought with contradictions and prejudices can occur.

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