Stephanie Stalvey's viral comics are in print for the first time as a tender, unflinchingly honest, and beautifully drawn memoir about faith, first love, and the courage to be your whole self. Perfect for fans of Blankets by Craig Thompson and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel. "Everything was either black or white. Pure or impure."
"In her luminous debut, Stalvey meditates on her separation from fundamentalist Christianity and how she found love despite questioning her faith. " -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"An artistically attractive, self-reflective examination of one woman's post-Evangelical spirituality." -Library Journal
"Intimate, searching, and visually striking, a book that feels as much like a reckoning as it does a genuine release." -AIPT Comics
"Stalvey provides some of the clearest and most straightforward writing and visual storytelling coming out of the post-evangelical community today." -Hippocampus Magazine
Interrogating her own upbringing in an evangelical community, Stephanie Stalvey weaves a story of faith, alienation, romance and acceptance, in this beautifully painted graphic memoir.
Stephanie grew up in an evangelical community where love and obedience were overlapping themes. In this world, sin was inevitable, her body was a temptation, and desire was dangerous. Her own thoughts could not be trusted, because she was only saved if she believed the "right things" about God.
But as she grew, built a life of her own, and fell in love with a young seminarian named James, the complexities of the human experience became impossible to ignore. Was God truly so exacting and judgmental? Could faith exist beyond these rigid borders? Could love be both passionate and pure? Her connection to James-honest, caring and sensual-became a safe place for her worldview to expand. And when their son was born, she understood love in a whole new way... suddenly, everything was sacred, everything was in color.
Through striking prose and beautiful mixed media illustrations, Stalvey takes us on an emotional journey of faith, romance, motherhood and loss. With tenderness and honesty, she unravels the fear and guilt woven into her past, reclaims her sense of self, and shows us how to embrace a love that is healing, transformative, and wholly one's own.
