Here's My Big Bold Ask

Plus, a lil book signing near you?

On Thursday, in an attempt to make a salad because healthy, I sliced the pad of my thumb open. I probably should have gotten stitches but who has time for that. We butterflied that baby up, wrapped it in a ton of gauze and carried on Mr Bowditch. But then Friday happened, by which I mean all I did was sleep and then wake up, and my neck wouldn’t move farther than one inch in any direction. And then, not to be too on the nose, but this morning I cried over spilled milk and cereal all over my laptop.

As I mopped up my laptop with my bum thumb and immobile neck, I had to ask myself the question, “Are you seeing the signs, Lo? Is it time to shut up and shut down?”

I would have said an immediate yes if I hadn’t binged/fast-forwarded an entire season of Farmer Wants a Wife yesterday in an attempt to quiet the cacophony in my head. Instead, I turned ye olde laptop upside down, prayed it would drain and dry enough to get through today’s interviews, washed my face, and am trying to resolutely face the day, sliced thumb, soggy keyboard, stiff neck, and all.

In just about twelve hours, copies of The Understory will begin shipping out from booksellers to the hands of readers everywhere. I’ve been holding this little book in my heart for almost two years and the actual book in my hands for one month, but tomorrow is the day she arrives in your hands and hearts, and I feel all kinds of feels about that.

Someone called the contents “braided essays” recently, yesterday after reading the whole thing, Nate called them “woven bits,” and another reader emailed me to say it is like a “patchwork blanket,” and I just don’t think there’s a better way to describe how the book lays out than those three images. I love the tactile images it brings to mind, because for all that grief and growth does in our hearts and minds, it often works its way out through our hands, through what we do with the grief. I braided, wove, and patchworked my way through my grief. I wonder what you will do with yours?

I know I’m making a big ask here:

Listen, I’m not going to beat around the bush, I want this book to do well. I want this book to do well in a way I never wished for or was willing to push for in my previous two books. There’s something about this book that makes me just feel it can do a lot of good in a lot of us.

I’m not trying super hard to hit the New York Times Bestseller list,¹ but if every single one of you reading this newsletter hits a button below and preorders a copy in the next twelve hours, The Understory will be a bestseller by this time tomorrow:

Some feedback from early readers is coming in and here’s what a few of them have said:

“What a gift you have birthed into the world. I read the whole thing on the NetGalley app and I don't like reading in my phone. And yet it was so hard to put down . . . Thank you thank you thank you. Your words are a balm, a treasure, a solace. Please please keep writing. We need your wise, kind, gentle, strong words.” —Nicole

“This book feels like a companion for the journey, discovering alongside me rather than standing on the other side telling me how to think about what I’m walking through, or how I will think about it when I get to the end, whatever “the end” means . . . Thank you for this gift. It is more timely and meaningful than you could have imagined.” —Amber

“This was a beautiful, easy, and surprisingly profound book. One I put down and said to myself, “Yes, surely that is the way to be right now, and it is an easy, rich, and joyful way.” And this without closing my eyes to the ugly and hurt around me. Thank you.” —Tara

What do you think? Will you preorder The Understory today?

An Evening with Me at Nooks Bookstore

If you’re not the preordering type and you live in the mid-Atlantic region, I will be at Nooks, now owned and operated by the inimitable

Shawn Smucker

and

Maile Silva

, in southeastern PA on June 8th for a book signing and lil’ reading. The cost of admission gets you in the door and also gets you a copy of the real live book itself—plus we get to meet, which you know is one of my favorite things about what I get to do. I would love to see you there. Here are the details.

Listen guys, I could not do what I get to do as my actual job, my actual vocation, if it wasn’t for you. All of you and each of you. I want this book to do well but more than anything, I want us to do well. I want us to grieve well and live well and die well and rise well. I want us to orient around Jesus and the good life we have in him and the beautiful earth that’s being renewed day by day by day by day.

I’m so freaking thankful for you all and in moments like these, when I see your names in my inboxes and on my social media and on text messages at a higher rate than normal, I’m just so much more thankful that you let yourself be seen by me. It means the world to me. I’ll never not ever take it for granted.

Love,

Lore

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1. But what if I am? I would have snubbed my nose up at myself for saying that a few years ago but I feel a lot less self-conscious about the dreams and goals that lurk below deck these days.