EPA 2018 Christian Book Award Finalist - Biography and Memoir


"When my doctor told me I was dying, I came alive."

What happens when you come face-to-face with your mortality? When your body fails you, what happens to your faith?

Russ Ramsey was struck by a bacterial infection that destroyed his mitral valve, sending him into heart failure and requiring urgent open-heart surgery. As he faced the possibility of death, he found himself awakened to new realities. In the critical days and months that followed, Ramsey came to see the world through the eyes of affliction. He grappled with fear, anger, depression, and loss, and yet he experienced grace through the suffering that filled him with a hope and hunger for the life to come.

This profoundly eloquent memoir gives voice to the deepest questions of the human condition. In the midst of pain, we can see glimpses of eternity.