Keeping sane, inside and out, outside and in, with a positive mindset!

This New York Times–bestselling novel is “lively, topical, and fantasy filled. Watch out, Terry McMillian. Cleage is on your tail” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). After a decade of elegant pleasures and luxe living with the Atlanta brothers and sisters with the best clothes and biggest dreams, Ava Johnson has temporarily returned home to Idlewild—her fabulous career and power plans smashed to bits by cold reality. But what she imagines to be the end is, instead, a beginning. Because, in the ten-plus years since Ava left, all the problems of the big city have come to roost in the sleepy North Michigan community whose ordinariness once drove her away; and she cannot turn her back on friends and family who sorely need her in the face of impending trouble and tragedy. Besides which, that one unthinkable, unmistakable thing is now happening to her: Ava Johnson is falling in love. Acclaimed playwright, essayist, New York Times–bestselling author, and columnist Pearl Cleage has created a world rich in character, human drama, and deep, compassionate understanding, in a remarkable novel that sizzles with sensuality, hums with gritty truth, and sings and crackles with life-affirming energy. “Very funny and charming . . . Following Cleage’s twists and turns of the human spirit, readers may find themselves on a very inspired and uplifted plane well before the last page.” —Washington Post Book World “Cleage . . . delivers a work of intelligence and integrity. . . . [A] memorable tale.” —-Publishers Weekly, starred review

Uses real life stories and personal examples to discuss nine aphorisms that describe and explain a large range of seemingly unusual behaviors.

"Yes, one could humanly be tempted almost to say that in a kind of innocence, it does not even know that it is despair." --Soren Kierkegaard You told yourself you were making progress toward the point from which you could accomplish something of significance but rather than arriving at that place, you find-sitting on the couch there with the house cleaned, the cabinets full and even dinner cooking on the stove, surrounded by the whiteness of empty time, engulfed in the whiteness of empty time-that you have arrived at a cul-de-sac; that is, the point from which nothing of significance can be accomplished. What's more, this cul-de-sac is the point from which no path leads to any other place from which one could accomplish anything of significance. And you can bet the blame attached to never accomplishing anything of significance-that is, of wasting your life-is several orders of magnitude more intense than that of merely failing to complete even every single one of your household duties.

In this shocking expose of the process by which the mental-health elite judge us all, Caplan demonstrates that much of what is labeled "mental illness" would be more appropriately called "problems in living". She also points out the flaws in using the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental-Health Disorders) to decide who is truly mentally ill.

Instead of an awkward experience, sharing your faith can be a simple, everyday part of life. As you grow in your love for Jesus, sharing him with others will overflow into every conversation. Casual interactions will turn into significant moments that bring the gospel into all your relationships.