“Grip your chair. This mind-boggling account of a family’s naive-yet-determined move to one of America’s challenging urban neighborhoods will lay its hand on you. Maria Garriott’s descriptions pull you in, her characters insist you stay. The narrative pays its rent up to the last page, which arrives all too quickly. I envy those about to read this story for the first time.”
—Steven Estes,
co-author (with Joni Eareckson Tada) of When God Weeps

“I pray I will be as faithful to my ministry calling as Maria Garriott has been to hers. With the language of a poet, Maria writes of raising kids, shaping a marriage, and serving a church and neighborhood caught ‘in the crossfi re of America’s racial war.’ Maria’s words capture the brokenness and healing, the grief and joy that lie at the heart of every true story of personal or community transformation.”
—Lynne Hybels,
Willow Creek Community Church, author of Nice Girls Don’t Change the World