Fireflies: Finding Light in a Dark World

Fireflies, is a literary memoir recounting the story of the writer’s quest to find light in the Church to ease the darkness she encounters in the world. It’s a book that Book Club readers will enjoy for the story itself, engaging the reader in the writer’s quest for answers from small town British Columbia, Canada and eventually to Zimbabwe. But it will also appeal to readers with a spiritual leaning. It is a book that poses deep questions about which people of faith wrestle—the existence of evil, the limits of helping another, what salvation requires. In the midst of the writer’s seemingly ordinary childhood, a darkness began to enter her brother, Jimmy. She saw evidence in his retreat from the games and exploits of his peers, in the anger that burned like a fire inside, consuming him, in his drinking that went well beyond youthful indulgence. As his younger sister, she was deeply worried but slow to understand the meaning of what she observed, and slower still to know how to act. Their parents, burdened by their own unhappiness, could neither acknowledge nor help what was happening to their boy. And the small-town of Prince George, British Columbia, in which they lived, was ill-suited to do anything but fear difference. Unable to watch his deterioration, she set about on a quest to find answers in the Church. Surely this was a spiritual suffering her brother was undergoing, but she found the Church to have few answers. Her journey to help her brother would take her all the way to Zimbabwe, where she learned about the destiny that was awaiting her. This is the story told by Fireflies, a 72,000-word memoir about love and loss, and the distinction between religion and spirituality.