Memoir Religion

At 14, Richard (Ricky) Abercrombie was besieged by prejudice because of his multi-racial background, and angered by unsatisfactory answers to his heartfelt questions about religious truth. The time was 1960, and the place was Greenville, South Carolina. Ricky began carrying a gun, skipping school, and numbing his painful emotions with alcohol. His parents were worried and his future looked bleak.

Rarely is book about spirituality and religion as funny and insightful as Patrick Nachtigall's No Religion Required: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Chocolate Milk, and Untimely Death. From an orphanage in Costa Rica to a leper colony in rural China, this is the hilarious true story of a lifelong traveling, religious pilgrim wrestling with the strange and profound claims of Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity.

Sherri Wyatt was raised by loving parents in a Christian home. However, perversion of grace by religion and religious rituals spoke the fire-and-brimstone message of condemnation, guilt, and shame. Confusion prevailed from an early age about the love of God. As life-threatening childhood health issues mounted, she felt God was mad at her. She tried to do good and be good, yet more trauma was inflicted.