BRAND NEW YOU IN CHRIST

A writer recounts her experiences in this debut Christian memoir.

In her book, Maelge presents her Christian story, frequently interspersed with her own color illustrations: photographs and paintings done in melted oil pastels and acrylic. She commences her inquiry into the commonality of her own experiences by asking general questions that many of her readers have doubtless posed to themselves. “Are you hurting? Are you suffering inside? Do you feel lost? Do you feel broken?” she asks. “The thing is we are lost in some way; we don’t have all the answers.” The author herself has felt all of these things, and the autobiographical elements she mixes in with her more general comments on the nature of faith add a leavening of empathy to her narrative. Those comments can sometimes be so exclamatory that they become a bit daunting (“Believe in the heart! Confess by mouth. Invite Jesus to your life as Lord and Savior. Believe once; be forgiven for past, present and all sin. How amazing is grace!”). And the autobiographical elements can exhibit some of the problems common to faith memoirs, mainly that ordinary, everyday occurrences are declared to be acts of divine intervention. The author finds a job, for instance, or gets a raise and praises God instead of her own hard work. Maelge’s paintings will not be to every reader’s taste—they tend toward being extremely impressionistic—but her spirited commentary and elaborations on the works’ meanings are unfailingly captivating and draw heavily on Christian Scripture. Equally appealing is the author’s honest appraisal of her own progress in her faith journey. Reflecting on her past, she admits that her mind was “chaotic with so much worries, doubts and fears” before her Christian rebirth. “Thoughts were rushing in at lightning speed,” she writes, in a sentiment that many of her readers will share. “I had no control.”

An inviting, if familiar, Christian account.