24 S UNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2021
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In MemoriamIn 2019, not long be-
fore Rachel Held Evans died from a
brief, sudden illness, she summoned her
husband to her office to take a look at
her laptop. The first 20 percent of her
new book was gone,
“lost to the binary
grave of technology,”
writes Daniel Jonce
Evans in a foreword to
“Wholehearted Faith,”
his wife’s posthu-
mously published
essay collection.
After a few desper-
ate searches, while the
best-selling author and
challenger of conser-
vative Christianity
tried to stay calm, her
husband, a self-described tech consult-
ant, located her work in a hidden file.
“Just in time, too, because our baby
was hungry and our 3-year-old was up
from his nap,” Evans writes. “A month
later Rachel got sick and never recov-
ered.” He goes on: “The 11,000 words we
found that day are part of this book you
hold in your hand. This manuscript isn’t
what Rachel originally envisioned. Our
life today isn’t what she envisioned.
Being dead at 37 isn’t what she envi-
sioned.”
Evans approached Jeff Chu, a family
friend and the author of “Does Jesus
Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s
Pilgrimage in Search of God in Amer-
ica,” about turning his wife’s work in
progress — plus other unpublished work
and unrealized ideas — into a finished
book. “Without hesitation, the instant I
had enough jumbled words out of my
mouth for him to comprehend my re-
quest, he’d already said yes,” Evans
writes.
Picking up the megaphone of a wom-
an who, according to her New York
Times obituary, “gave voice to a genera-
tion of wandering evangelicals wrestling
with their faith,” was a daunting
prospect to say the least.
“Of course I wanted to say no,” Jeff
Chu writes in his introduction. “I’m not
Rachel. I am the furthest thing from a
straight, white, Southern, Baptist-
turned-Episcopalian woman.”
The day before Rachel Held Evans’s
funeral, Chu visited her home in Dayton,
Tenn. He descended to her basement
office, sat in her chair and looked at the
corkboard above her desk, “where she
had pinned encouragements to herself,
things that she wanted to remember as
she wrote.” Chu recalls, “The words that
stood out to me the most: ‘Tell the
truth.’” So he did.
“Wholehearted Faith” is now No. 12
on the hardcover nonfiction list. It tack-
les topics like grace, doubt and sacrifice
while somehow embodying the advice of
its first author to its second: “Thick
skin, tender heart.” 0
Inside the List
E LISABETH EGAN
‘A month
later Rachel
got sick and
never recov-
ered.’THE LANGUAGE OF THIEVES:My
Family’s Obsession With a Secret
Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate,
by Martin Puchner. (Norton, 288 pp.,
$17.95.)This “deeply personal
project” probes “the meaning of
language and family, inheritance
and debt,” as our reviewer, Corinna
da Fonseca-Wollheim, put it. The
title refers to Rotwelsch, a mix of
Yiddish, Hebrew and repurposed
German that antisemites cited to
link Jews and crime (though most
of its itinerant speakers were not
Jewish and their “secret code” was
not about crime).AGAINST THE LOVELESS WORLD,by
Susan Abulhawa. (Washington Square
Press, 400 pp., $17.)In Abulhawa’s
third novel, a Palestinian woman
sentenced to solitary confinement
in Israel looks back on a life of
sexual promiscuity and abuse, as a
refugee who fled to Kuwait, then to
Jordan, then back to Palestine.THE REVOLUTION ACCORDING TO
RAYMUNDO MATA,by Gina Apostol.
(Soho Press, 360 pp., $17.)Like
“Infinite Jest” and “Pale Fire,”
Apostol’s second novel, which was
first published in the Philippines in
2009 and won the country’s Na-
tional Book Award, “adopts absurd
premises that are treated with
graven seriousness by wordplay-
obsessed narrators,” Randy Boy-
agoda wrote in his review, adding
that its “deranged scholarly con-
tours” are both “confidently ob-
scure” and “very, very funny.”WILD THING:The Short, Spellbind-
ing Life of Jimi Hendrix,by Philip
Norman. (Liveright, 416 pp., $18.95.)
“Skillfully narrated” by Norman,
also the author of the Beatles book
“Shout!,” the guitar legend’s life
story “becomes even more as-
tounding, thanks to an abundance
of rich details,” according to our
reviewer, Lauretta Charlton.THE LAST AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT:
The Brilliant Life and Improbable
Education of Henry Adams,by
David S. Brown. (Scribner, 464 pp.,
$20.)This “marvelous” biography,
in our reviewer Amy S. Green-
berg’s words, “reveals how dynas-
tic burden shaped the personality
and career of the brilliant, bitter
and thoroughly unlikable man who
brought the prominence of the
Adams family, and expectations for
the endurance of political legacies,
to an ignominious end.”THIS IS NOT MY MEMOIR,by André
Gregory and Todd London. (Picador,
240 pp., $17.)Anyone who has
seen “My Dinner With André,” our
reviewer, Phillip Lopate, observed,
will recognize the narrative voice
— “part naïve seeker, part canny
operator” — in this “engaging,
vivacious whatsit,” spiced with
“wit, self-deprecating humor and
shrewd analytical insight.”Paperback Row/ B Y JENNIFER KRAUSSPRINT | HARDCOVER BEST SELLERS
WEEKS
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WEEKTHIS WEEKLAST Fiction WEEK NonfictionWEEKS
ON LIST1
(^) THE STRANGER IN THE LIFEBOAT, by Mitch Albom. (Harper) 1
After a ship explodes, nine people struggling to survive pull a
man who claims to be the Lord out of the sea.
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(^1) THE JUDGE’S LIST, by John Grisham. (Doubleday) The 3
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(^) GAME ON, by Janet Evanovich. (Atria) The 28th book in 1
the Stephanie Plum series. Diesel and Stephanie track the
international computer hacker Oswald Wednesday.
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(^2) BETTER OFF DEAD, by Lee Child and Andrew Child. 2
(Delacorte) The 26th book in the Jack Reacher series.
Reacher helps an F.B.I. agent look for her missing brother
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5
(^3) THE WISH, by Nicholas Sparks. (Grand Central) Maggie 6
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medical diagnosis over Christmas.
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(^4) THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY, by Amor Towles. (Viking) Two 5
friends who escaped from a juvenile work farm take Emmett
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(^6) CLOUD CUCKOO LAND, by Anthony Doerr. (Scribner) An 6
interconnected cast of dreamers and outsiders are in
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8
(^5) STATE OF TERROR, by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise 4
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affairs, the new Secretary of State Ellen Adams confronts
interconnected global threats.
9
(^7) APPLES NEVER FALL, by Liane Moriarty. (Holt) The Delaney 8
siblings suspect their father of causing the disappearance of
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(^) OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS, by Gary Shteyngart. (Random 1
House) Betrayals emerge and romances develop when eight
friends wait out the pandemic in a country house.
1
(^) THE LYRICS: 1956 TO THE PRESENT, by Paul McCartney. 1
(Liveright) A two-volume celebration of 154 songs, with
handwritten texts, paintings and photographs from the
songwriter’s archives.
2
(^) IMMUNE, by Philipp Dettmer. (Random House) The founder 1
of the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt gives an overview of
elements of the body’s immune system.
3
(^) THE PRESIDENT AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTER, by Brian 1
Kilmeade. (Sentinel) The Fox News host gives an account
of the relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick
Douglass.
4
(^4) THE STORYTELLER, by Dave Grohl. (Dey Street) A memoir 5
by the musician known for his work with Foo Fighters and
Nirvana.
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(^3) BEST WISHES, WARMEST REGARDS, by Daniel Levy and 2
Eugene Levy. (Black Dog & Leventhal) Character profiles,
major story moments and behind-the-scenes tales from the
Emmy Award-winning series “Schitt’s Creek.”
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(^) WOKE UP THIS MORNING, by Michael Imperioli and Steve 1
Schirripa with Philip Lerman. (Morrow) An oral history of
“The Sopranos” by two of its stars who host the podcast
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(^1) GOING THERE, by Katie Couric. (Little, Brown) The former 2
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8
(^2) RENEGADES, by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. 2
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(^8) TO RESCUE THE REPUBLIC, by Bret Baier with Catherine 4
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(^9) TASTE, by Stanley Tucci. (Gallery) The award-winning actor 5
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An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales are barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.
SALES PERIOD OF OCTOBER 31-NOVEMBER 6