A savagely witty, warm and profound memoir by a young woman with a terminal illness, who contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her beloved husband and son, she is not the lynchpin of existence and life will go on.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - 'A meditation on sense-making when there's no sense to be made, on letting go when we can't hold on, and on being unafraid even when we're terrified.' LUCY KALANITHI 'Belongs on the shelf alongside other terrific books about this difficult subject, like Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal.' BILL GATES NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY REAL SIMPLE London-born Kate Bowler, a thirty-five year-old professor at the school of divinity at Duke, had finally had a baby with her childhood sweetheart when she began to feel jabbing pains in her stomach. She lost thirty pounds, guzzled antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer. As Kate navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, she pulls the reader into her life and her history – affectionately filled with a colourful retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, parents, and doctors – and shares her irreverent, laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must cure her habit of ‘skipping to the end’ and planning the next move. An historian of the American Prosperity Gospel (the creed of the megachurches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough) Kate finds that she craves these same 'outrageous certainties'. Why is it so hard to surrender when she knows there are no spiritual guarantees? In Everything Happens for Reason we encounter one of the talented, courageous few who - like Paul Kalanithi - can articulate the grief we feel as we contemplate our own mortality.

"This is a beautifully-written, intelligent, soulful book. Kate’s story makes room for anger, for love, for faith and despair, for prayer and silence . . . necessary reading for all of us who long to walk faithfully and honestly through the darkest and most desolate of seasons." - Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling author of Present Over Perfect and Bread

"Kate Bowler has stage 4 cancer and she faces it with courage and questions. Does everything happen for a reason? Is there a master plan? Kate comes to the simplest conclusion of all: "Life is beautiful. Life is hard." Accepting these two truths side-by-side can change the way we live . . . A book for all of us who have sought meaning in catastrophe and needed a way to live on." - Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life

"The Kate you will come to know in this book is 100% real: honest, brave, holy, ridiculous, profane, hilarious, human - her fierce and beautiful words will make you . . . long for courage to tell the truth about your [own] life." - Amy K. Butler, Senior Minister, The Riverside Church

"Throughout, the author delivers raw emotion, realistic description, and candid assessments… An inspiring story of finding faith—in God, in family, and in oneself—while walking close to the Valley of the Shadow of Death."" - Kirkus Reviews