Talking of Michelangelo: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell in the Burgundy Region

So you go to France for your fortieth birthday for a quiet time of prayer, good wine, and a peaceful monastic experience. What could possibly go wrong?

In this bracingly honest and unexpectedly funny narrative, Peter Giersch recounts the journey that began as a simple getaway but evolved into the most transformative experience of his life. Follow the author as he takes you from the bustling streets of Paris to a secluded monastery in the Burgundy region — and then into the depths of a “dark night of the soul” that threatens the very foundations of his faith.

Part travelogue and part spiritual memoir, Giersch ponders the existential imperative in conversation with the great minds of Western civilization and twentieth-century pop culture. Blending vivid storytelling and unfiltered candor, Giersch’s story reflects J. D. Salinger’s first-person conversational style and C. S. Lewis’s intellectual approach to the Faith, making it a sort of Catcher in the Rye meets Mere Christianity, which dares to voice the deepest doubts and questions we’ve all been grappling with.

As his Ignatian retreat becomes a battleground of faith and doubt, Giersch grapples with the hardest issues — sex, sin, suffering, and mortality — and discovers that God is far more patient, creative, and mischievously loving than we ever imagined. The result is a gorgeous literary memoir that is brutally honest and relentlessly hopeful.

For anyone who has ever sought God at the intersection of the secular world and the inner life, for anyone who has ever longed to figure out where God is hiding in the chaos of the twenty-first century, this book will bring clarity to the questions and joy in the answers.

Paperback. 240 pages.