Here If You Need Me: A True Story

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Author: Kate Braestrup
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$23.99~~
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Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9

ISBN: 0316066303
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780316066303
ASIN: 0316066303

Publication Date: August 1, 2007
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Ten years ago, Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew were enjoying the life they shared together. They had four young children, and Drew, a Maine state trooper, would soon begin training to become a minister as well. Then early one morning Drew left for work and everything changed. On the very roads that he protected every day, an oncoming driver lost control, and Kate lost her husband.

Stunned and grieving, Kate decided to continue her husband's dream and became a minister herself. And in that capacity she found a most unusual mission: serving as the minister on search and rescue missions in the Maine woods, giving comfort to people whose loved ones are missing, and to the wardens who sometimes have to deal with awful outcomes. Whether she is with the parents of a 6-year-old girl who had wandered into the woods, with wardens as they search for a snowmobile rider trapped under the ice, or assisting a man whose sister left an infant seat and a suicide note in her car by the side of the road, Braestrup provides solace, understanding, and spiritual guidance when it's needed most.

HERE IF YOU NEED ME is the story of Kate Braestrup's remarkable journey from grief to faith to happiness. It is dramatic, funny, deeply moving, and simply unforgettable, an uplifting account about finding God through helping others, and the tale of the small miracles that occur every day when life and love are restored.

Customer Reviews: Read 63 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Here If You Need Me August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Outstanding book. It was hard to put it down until I had finished reading it. Unlike any other book I've read. The author wrote ths book with her heart.

5 out of 5 stars

wisdom on paper August 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

one of the best memoirs i've read in years and it's my job to read them. this is an act of love. i felt the leaves crunch beneath my feet as kate took me into the wilderness, both internal and external. beautiful.
-lauren elise daniels, prose editor

4 out of 5 stars

A memoir in the truest sense of the word July 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

A memoir is a written account of the events that have been observed by someone throughout their life; an autobiography is the story of a person's life as written by that person. Most "memoirs" these days are really autobiographies. But in Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup makes sure that the star is her colleagues, her "clients," her state, and the God she shares with all of them.

Surrounded by death, accidents, and lost children, Braestrup reveals that an amazing kind of grace can come with witnessing trauma on a daily basis. She lives on the turn of a dime in others' lives, where loved ones don't come home and lives end. Somehow, though, it isn't sad. It's beautiful and thoughtful and poignant and funny, and though you may cry, you feel somehow blessed after reading it. Braestrup clearly loves her job, which more than anything consists of just "being there" for others in some of their most trying moments. The title couldn't be more appropriate.

I'm being pretty saccharine about this book. But in a world where "minister" usually gets attached to political agendas, Braestrup is a reassuring figure, there only to make the transition easier, no matter what kind of transition it is. Be warned--it may move you so much that by turns you will want to either become a Unitarian Universalist minister or move to Maine.

5 out of 5 stars

Moving and honest July 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is incredibly moving in its honesty. It is extremely readable, and the development of Kate's story is gripping. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I became aware of Kate's writing by listening to an interview by Krista Tippett on the program "Speaking of Faith" on National Public Radio. The book more than met my expectations.

2 out of 5 stars

Memoir or self promotion? July 21, 2008
3 out of 7 found this review helpful

Okay, I get it, Kate Braestrup thinks her job is "cool." Good for you, but a memoir this does not make.I waited for this book to grab me until I was about 25 pages from the end, and then I had enough. Not another minute of precious reading time to be spent on this fluff. Those annoying little stories, the meaningless anecdotes from conversations that were not profound or moving, just superficial. A colleague recalls walking four or five miles in howling wind, lost and freezing."It was great," she concludes, "it really was." Pleeeez! The writing is so-so, the use of pretentious "big words" unecessary and stilted.
The thing is, I was willing to look past all of that if only I had found some satisfaction from learning about Kate's philosophy and spiritual depth. The book fails here. The voice in this book almost mocks deep faith, and left me wondering why a state as economically impoverished as Maine is would pay this woman a salary. For what, hiking into the woods to share condolences with strangers? I am baffled, utterly.
What is all the publishing hype about? I am an agnostic and have more spiritual depth than this gal.If I read her son's expression "Mom-Dude" one more time I thought I'd scream! Pass this one over. The best thing about it is the beautiful cover of the paperback edition, but there's little to be found inside.

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