Richard Paul Evans, author, father, and husband, unpacks memorable personal stories and life lessons experienced over half a century in Sharing Too Much: Musings from an Unlikely Life. This broad-ranging collection of entertaining, concise essays offers thought-provoking insights and sage advice.
Over the course of seven sections, Evans is incredibly open in sharing details about his life. He was a "lonely little boy" and "a poor kid from a large family" who suffered "years of teasing and torment" because of Tourette's syndrome, which was only diagnosed when he was 41 years old. ("I knew something was wrong," he tells his doctor, "but I just thought I was weird.") When his father lost his job, Evans's mother began to endure serious depression that manifested into suicidal tendencies and the family moved from Arcadia, Calif., to a rather "dilapidated," inherited house in Salt Lake City, Utah. This move only exacerbated Evans's feelings of displacement.
Evans (A Christmas Memory) mines his past and the foundations that led him to become a writer. Several essays probe his immensely popular first novel, The Christmas Box--how it was conceived via real-life experiences, the ingenious back-door path it traveled to publication, and how that novel paved the way for Evans's extraordinary success. Other sections share inventive moral-themed remembrances and fables, and many stories delve into Evans's enduring marriage; parenthood; the unexpected teachers of life; and even otherworldly, spiritual experiences.
Evans is a remarkably relentless optimist whose moving, hopeful, and easy-to-absorb essays will greatly appeal to and inspire a wide range of readers. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines