AS SOMEONE WHO has experienced life-altering, faith-shaking physical pain, when I see a book with a subtitle like The Body, Pain, and Faith, I find myself automatically asking: Can I trust this author? Do they speak of pain from personal experience or as a mere intellectual exercise? Five-time novelist Darcey Steinke answers this question right away. In the foreword to her new nonfiction book This Is the Door, Steinke details her experience of several months of back pain so intense that it caused her to “walk a tight-rope between raging against [her] pain and trying to search for any scraps of meaning that might be left in its wreckage.” Those of us who have endured pain like this can likely relate. As the book continues, Steinke explores her own pain, the pains of her family members, the pains of various historical artists and thinkers, and the pains of people she interviewed who suffer in different ways. Is there meaning to be found?
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