Jeff Sharlet rose to prominence in political media circles as the author of The Family and C Street, two books that probed the intersection of American politics and fundamentalist Christianity. He describes the essays collected in Sweet Heaven When I Die as "attempted escapes" from that subculture, but it's far from a clean break. In one chapter, he accompanies members of a youth ministry to a local "hell house," where the evils of secularism are portrayed in graphic detail; another short essay describes Sharlet's encounter with "Vera," a German teenager who found Jesus as an exchange student in Oklahoma, then struggled to find a church in Berlin that spoke to her with the same power. Even a profile of the radical cultural critic Cornel West is distinguished, in this context, by the differences between his self-described "Christocentric" pragmatism and mainstream fundamentalism.
The collection does branch out, though, with compelling portraits of a Yiddish novelist who spent years writing about life in the ghettos of Lodz; a far-left activist murdered by Mexican law enforcement officials while trying to cover political riots; and a New Age healer in post-9/11 New York who's grown rich providing clients with the security of "spiritual health." Sharlet's own journey of discovery is often an integral part of these profiles, and interspersed among them are even more personal reflections, drawing upon his experiences and those of his friends to describe a world where the search for meaning never ends. In the end, he says, it's in not knowing the ultimate answers, in leaving ourselves open to the possibility of change, that we can continue to draw hope. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com