Anne Lamott is a national treasure, and her writings indicate an embrace of life as it is truly lived--complete with all the twists and turns it takes some of us to grasp that we are truly loved by God.

These are the last three sentences of the book, "Traveling Mercies" by Anne Lemott. And they sum up this collection of stories beautifully. This is a book about faith and a book about gratitude. It is intelligent, thought provoking, funny and highly readable. Anne Lemott, Annie--as it appears her friends call her--lets us into her world and shares a very personal and poignant path of a unique and awkward girl taking off her "glasses of puberty" and coming of age. She lays everything bare, from her feelings about her bushy hair and alien eyes, her drug and alcohol additions, to her love for her father and dealing not only with his death, but also with the death of her best friend. We enter the world of a single mother, a struggling and ultimately successful writer, and all her feelings of self-doubt. She seems to have a third eye when it comes to seeing those around her, and through her observations and writing, we too can appreciate people and situations to a greater degree.

Writes Lamott of a sick woman from her church in a story named Ashes: "It must have been too annoying for everyone to be trying to manipulate her into being a better sport than she was capable of being. I always thought that was heroic of her, that it spoke of such integrity to refuse to pretend that you're doing well just to help other people deal with the fact that sometimes we face an impossible loss."

The underlying theme throughout each brutally honest passage is the message of her faith in God and how she came to discover this faith. She LEARNS to pray and uses prayer to get her over the large and the small humps. One can't help but come to love this child of God, and everyone in her life.

From the author of "A Line Between Friends," and "The Things I Wish I'd Said," McKenna Publishing Group.

When she is not traveling on book tours, or out of town doing public speaking or teaching writer's workshops, Anne Lamott can be found in her native Marin County, California, usually hanging out with her son Sam, who is a little boy in this book. Anne is a single mom, and never was married to Sam's dad, who is one in a succession of lovers she has had in her quest to fill the gap left by her now deceased Dad, whom she loved as much as sunshine, air, and life itself.

Anne embodies a unique blend of sorrowful sensitivity, sharp observation, unashamed candor, unmarred eloquence, and spiritual sweetness and vulnerability. Her humor delights and astonishes, as does her wisdom, often expressed in brief epigrams worth becoming the armataure around which you just might restructure aspects of your life. I love the woman and trust her because above all, she is unafraid to be real.

However, this fearlessness did not come naturally or easily. Anne has had a messy life. In Traveling Mercies she pulls the bandages off her wounds that we might see. In her "Overture," titled "Lily Pads," she retraces her fragile journey into the arms of God, telling us how she was dragged kicking, screaming and crawling, into the Kingdom by pierced hands, and how her wounds are now healing. What follows is twenty-four chapters divided into seven sections: Mountain, Valley, Sky; Church, People, Steeple; Tribe; Kids, Some Sick; Body and Soul; "Fambly"; Shore and Ground. She reveals glimpses, sparks, glimmers of God's glory in the mundane relationships and neurotic struggles of her life, teaching us about forgiveness, grace, and hope. Never preachy, she is always vigilant to preserve life's mixed quality, light in the midst of darkness, hope in the midst of despair, joy, wet with tears of sorrow. You won't find a plastic Jesus on the dashboard of her car, or anywhere in this book.

Lamott's candor, humor, faith and groundedness are everywhere apparent, as in this quotation: "God: I wish you could have some permanence, a guarantee or two, the unconditional love we all long for. 'It would be such skin off your nose?' I demand of God. I never get an answer. But in the meantime I have learned that most of the time, all you have is the moment, and the imperfect love of people" (168).

The book is aptly titled. She is sharing with us the some of the mercies she's found traveling the bumpy, potholed pathways of life in the raw. If you are looking for pat answers, look elsewhere. But if you're in need of mercy and a little light in the midst of your own darkness, find it here.

This certainly does not sound like a book on faith. At least nothing like I am accustomed to. That is the main thing that kept me reading it. The book was referred to by Gigi Graham, a friend that I admire, but I was shocked this book would be on her referral list, her coming from a "holy" family and all.

I had difficulty getting past the multitude of four letter words, and at times peaked over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching me read it as I sat in the waiting area and after boarding my flight. Then when I gasped or burst out laughing I know I received some prunish glances form the annoyed or sleeping co-travelers.

Anne's disprespect for the reader was unnerving. A violation at times. So, I simply kept reminiding myself, "I'm a big boy." - it's not like I haven't heard these "terms" before.

Still her journey is stimulating and her writing, well she's a kind of Meryl Streep really, very versitle and somewhat intoxicating.

Careful what you reccomend - this is not for the faint of heart - but I still pick it up once in a while - just for the creativity and all.

I am almost done with this book....but reading it has not been the experience I had thought it would be. I realize that this book is about her travels towards faith and that is a uniquely individual thing, but I am really struck by how self-involved the author is...her brand of Christianity seems solely to be how can God enhance her life and the life of those she loves. It all revolves around how finding God has improved her life...with nothing about what God requires of her. I don't consider myself Christian in the born again sense but I was certainly raised in a Christian manner...by parents who volunteered in a million different ways in order to serve God and those less fortunate. Why doesn't Anne Lamott put down the pen and go work in a soup kitchen? She definitely writes well and I enjoy her style, but she needs to get outside her head!