A LITTLE FAITH

Medical science and desperate prayer join forces to keep a premature baby alive in this memoir.

In November 1992, Krech’s wife, Karen, delivered a baby daughter after just 22 weeks of gestation. Doctors at their New Jersey hospital were so certain that Faith Catherine would soon die—she weighed less than a pound—that they were reluctant to even treat her in the neonatal intensive care unit. Against all expectations, she survived the night and then the 72-hour “viability” milestone, but she remained in critical condition with a grim prognosis. Her tiny lungs could not breathe on their own, but the ventilator itself could cause permanent lung damage, and the highly concentrated oxygen it pumped might leave her blind; feeding tubes carried the threat of infection; and her immature brain frequently forgot to keep her heart beating. Faith’s battle to live became a metaphorical crisis of faith for her Roman Catholic parents, who wrestled with the question of whether God really was in control of her fate as they prepared to lose her. Krech turned to Christian radio, the theological writings of C.S. Lewis, and the Bible for answers and began contemplating the Gospel verses “Ask and ye shall receive” and “Have faith as small as a mustard seed and move mountains.” He began praying regularly and ardently for Faith, as did family friends and, unbeknown to him, a prayer circle of strangers at a retirement home. YA author Krech fills his heartfelt narrative with a sharply observed NICU procedural as Faith’s doctors and nurses shepherded her through setbacks, kept her vital processes running, and celebrated small victories like the first opening of her blue eyes, all of which he observes in painful, evocative detail. (“Amid a tangle of wires, tubes, and tape lay a tiny, emaciated body not much bigger than my hand….Her limbs curled stiff and tight, moving in slow, spastic jerks. Her toes arched upward, thin and bony. The skin was stretched over her body like plastic wrap. Our daughter.”) The result is an absorbing medical odyssey that turns into a knotty, inspiring spiritual journey.

A moving account of Christian belief holding firm against long odds.