BOOKS
by Linda Lawrence HuntSoul Space shares the compelling story of our family’s journey to create places of beauty and welcome in a global guesthouse and gardens. My husband Jim and I wanted to honor the compassionate spirit of our young adult daughter Krista who was killed while volunteering in Bolivia with her husband. Twenty years ago, we joined with family and friends to launch the Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship (www.kristafoundation.org) to encourage other young adults engaged in a year or more of service in developing nations or America’s urban cities. A year later, we replaced a dilapidated barn with a guesthouse we named the Hearth and created global gardens that center many gatherings.
The book features inspiring stories from Krista colleagues, many Spokane community groups, and visitors from around the world. Their reflections on how their spirits were strengthened by time at the Hearth attests to the human hunger for pauses, for peace, for beauty. In a world dominated by endless distractions and divisiveness, an early reviewer Dr. Sharon Daloz Parks wrote, “Soul Space will stir your heart and ignite your own imagination of the possible. A vital read for today’s world.”
With 180 beautiful color photographs, this book invites readers to imagine how to cultivate their own Hearth spaces. Creating such intentional places will gift their families, neighbors, friends, and communities with warmth and welcome, much needed in today’s world.
Praise
“An extraordinary book, beautiful in language, presentation, and spirit!” – Jane Kirkpatrick, award-winning author, Everything She Didn’t Say and Homestead
“In a world of systemic busyness, endless distraction, and always-moving-on, we all hunger for hearth time, for pause time, for soul space. The Hearth, a guest retreat space, provides a template that lodges in the heart, a seed of imagination that emerging adults and other guests can carry into their future and use to create places in their communities where they can drop anchor and abide, stay, dwell, live—and make a difference. Soul Space will stir your heart and ignite your own imagination of the possible. A vital read for today’s world.” – Sharon Daloz Parks, author of Big Questions, Worthy Dreams: Mentoring Emerging Adults in Their Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Faith
“Soul Space welcomes readers into a distinctive journey that begins with the loss of a beloved daughter and the emergence of the Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship, an empowering community, and the Hearth, an inspiring place for young adults engaged in service, and for visiting guests. With Linda Lawrence Hunt’s winsome writing and Jim Hunt’s evocative poetry, this eagerly awaited book will inform and inspire a wide audience!” – Ronald C. White, author of presidential biographies A. Lincoln, A Biography and American Ulysses: A Life of Ulysses S. Grant and a visiting scholar at the Hearth.
“Soul Space provided a gracious space for my own soul in the company of the grieving. … The interwoven stories of Soul Space partake in the scandal of the incarnation — that we meet the Holy One in specific stories, in service, in a seat by the hearth or in a garden. This is where we find shalom — the way the world should be.” – Nancy T. Fox, The Presbyterian Outlook
The death of a child immerses parents into a lifelong challenge of living with one of life’s most heartbreaking losses. Pilgrimage through Loss tells the story of our family’s journey, along with interviews from thirty other mothers and fathers. They add their voices to the silence that often surrounds suffering in our ‘mourning avoidant’ culture. The book illuminates the varied pathways that parents eventually discover that opens their lives to strength and healing. Rather than prescribing a path that will lead to recover, I encourage parents to find the pathways that work for them as they seek to engage life again with meaning and hope. Pilgrimage through Loss not only helps grieving parents, but also provides an insightful resource for those wanting to understand and come alongside a family in grief. It includes questions for reflection and discussion, plus recent research on grief and loss, and a listing of organizations for bereaved parents.
Praise
Linda Hunt’s sensitively written book speaks profoundly to the hardest passages of human loss, but she leads the reader through such depths to a new and unexpected place. With an honestly that is both wise and unflinching, she shows us how joy does not supplant but rather transforms grieving.” Darrell L. Guder, H. W. Luce Professor, Princeton Theological Seminary
“Award-winning author Linda Lawrence Hunt does it again. First with Bold Spirit, now with Pilgrimage through Loss, she invites her readers into a soul journey of grief, compassion and renewal. With due respect to many books about grief, it is Hunt’s spiritual insight and compelling prose that will make one reader want to tell another and another about this extraordinary book.” Ronald C. White, Jr., Author, A. Lincoln, a Biography and Fellow, The Huntington Library
“Linda Hunt speaks to the heart of military families! Every military chaplain longs for resources like Pilgrimage through Loss, and Linda has given birth from her own pain and faith. It will bring much needed aid and comfort to thousands of gold-star parents for years to come.” Colonel Les Hyder, Retired Chaplain and Former Director of the Air National Guard Chaplain Corps
Bold Spirit is the extraordinary story of Helga Estby, a mother of eight who, in 1896, dared to walk unescorted with her daughter across America in order to win a $10,000 wager and stave off the foreclosure of her family farm. Using their wits and armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a Smith and Wesson revolver, and daughter Clara’s curling iron, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, mountain lions, and the occasional thief with grit and determination. Allowed to carry only $5 a piece, and needing to earn their livelihood along the way, their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public’s imagination.
Accomplishing what was once deemed impossible for women, they arrived in New York heralded by the city’s newspapers for their astonishing achievements. But their triumph was quickly complicated by deep disappointment, betrayal, and heartbreaking news from home. These devastating consequences combined to silence their remarkable story among their family and friends for generations.
From the Author
Linda encountered the remarkable story of Helga Estby when Helga’s great grandson was an 8th grader and entered a 5-page essay in the Washington State History contest where Linda’s husband happened to be a judge. Except finding a scrapbook with a few newspaper articles, her descendants knew very little about this secret story until Linda researched this throughout America and Norway for almost 19 years. Bold Spirit emerged from her discoveries initially included in her doctoral thesis for Gonzaga University. Published first by the University of Idaho Press and now Random House Anchor books, it became a bestselling book, and awarded the national Willa (Cather) Literary Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Washington State Book Award.
Praise
“A heroic ‘forgotten first’…a new women’s history classic has emerged.” Forward Magazine
“Surprising, inspiring—Hunt skillfully brings the story alive.” The Seattle Times
“A thoughtful discussion of the social and psychological factors that often silence family stories. Fortunately (Hunt) has broken the silence of Helga’s story to embolden the spirits of future generations.” Bloomsbury Review