Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Phillip learned in college that his mom lied about his father's death. That made him question his own life. He and his brother Marshall moved around alot when they were young because their mother fid not make a lot of money. Marshall had a falling out wit his mother in his twenties and had not talked to her for years. This was a very honest portrail of life.

A poignant and riveting memoir. Racism, family dysfunction, mental illness, and religious extremism are captured against the backdrop of the counter culture of the 50s and 60s. Interesting, emotional, and insightful.

I was eager to read this galley because Philip Yancey’s writing has had a positive influence on my own spiritual journey through the years. Having that context, I flew through the book in a couple of days. I’m not going to say that I loved it because it’s a difficult read if, like me, you’ve experienced the toxic and abusive religious culture that he grew up in. Even though I found it difficult, it was totally worth the effort and I’ve been thinking a lot about it and recommending it to friends.

Review of Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey
Philip Yancey grew up in a religiously strict, fundamentalist home, raised by a single mother. Philip’s parents planned to be missionaries to Africa. While his parents prepared for the mission field, Philip and his brother Marshall were born. At age 23, Philip’s father developed polio and an iron lung took over his breathing. Not wanting a life of being paralyzed, Philip’s father checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice, and left the life-saving iron lung. Philip’s parents proclaimed God would heal him. He died two weeks later.
Comparing herself to Hannah, the mother of Samuel in the Bible, Philip’s mother dedicated her young sons to be missionaries to Africa, while prone upon her husband’s fresh grave.
The family struggled financially, living near Atlanta well below the poverty line. Philip’s maternal grandparents will not help, and this provides a clue to Philip’s mother’s harshness. Philip’s mother is moody, and a rift opens between her and her sons. Marshall and his mother never overcome this divide.
Philip explores the racism taught to him in church and in school, racism endemic to the Bible Belt and white southern culture. I didn’t grow up as far south as Philip, but I can easily relate to the same inculcation of injustice and easy use of the n-word.
Both boys are bright, even exceptional. One after the other they go off to Bible College in South Carolina. The college has sixty-some rules, and the atmosphere there seems like an extension of their legalistic church and home life. Marshall responds by turning from God, endeavoring to break every rule the school has.
Philip has a similar crisis of faith, yet in his skepticism God meets him in a life-changing encounter. This is where the light fell. Philip’s description of that event is one of the book’s highlights for me.
Marshall and Philip’s paths continued to diverge. Philip becomes a writer, well-known in Christian circles, while Marshall indulges in the excesses of the world and eschews belief in God. Philip contemplates how brothers raised in the same environment can come to such different lives.
If you've read any of Philip's books, you'll enjoy getting to know the man behind them.

I really enjoyed this book! This book was generously provided to me through NetGalley. Highly Recommended!

This is an interesting account of an unusual life. I went into it hoping for more. Perhaps I could find something useful that could apply to my own life someday? While the author’s life certainly had ups and downs, I came away having read another memoir.

“I can’t trust anyone - starting with myself.”

In his memoir, Philip Yancey tells stories of his southern fundamentalist upbringing centered around his mother’s vow for her two sons. He traces the divergent  paths his older brother Marshall and he took in spite of her vow to give her boys to the service of God. The relationships between Mother and son and the two boys evolve over the pages.

Yancey explores personal choice, hypocrisy, sin, and faith throughout, ultimately showing the role of grace in man’s destiny. Yancey’s lifelong questions are the same questions his brother Marshall asked.  “What is real, and what is fake?” Each wrestled with the questions and arrived at a different place.

This is a true spiritual coming of age story, a profound testimony of God’s power and saving grace, and a cautionary tale of the damage flawed people (in authority) can cause. 

There is nothing I can point to that is wrong with the book.  Yancey is honest and humble. Still I didn’t enjoy reading about the devastation adults cause to young people or the falseness Yancey experienced in places of faith.  It makes me angry when people justify their sins and are cruel in the name of God. Scene after scene that happens here and it is too much for my sensibilities.  I get that we are flawed and need Jesus.  I want to be dependent on only Jesus.  But to read all of it clustered together is discouraging and depressing. This is a truthful book, but just not the right book at the right time for me.

Yancey says he has come to “… view church, like family, as a dysfunctional cluster of needy people. Life is difficult, and we seek ways to cope.” I agree. Awareness and repentance are good places to start. For that I would recommend this book as a cautionary tale and invitation to seek Jesus through The Bible and a healthy and healing church.

Philip Yancey’s memoir was moving, challenging, stirring, and difficult to read at times. I could relate to elements of the fundamentalist teaching which was reminiscent of some teaching from my own childhood. I could relate to his struggle to reconcile black-and-white, “ungrace” belief systems with the true God.

I loved the candor with which Yancey spoke of his difficult and varied history. It definitely gave deeper insight to his other writings. I loved it. I’m grateful that he chose to struggle through with the Lord—his writing has been a great help to me.

I think maybe you needed to be familiar with the author to really slog through this. He seems to be someone people know but I am not familiar with him. Parts of the book were interesting--his brother and early life was solid but college and young adulthood was a real snore.

Where the Light Fell by Philip Yancey is probably the best book I’ve read so far this year. It was achingly honest; a bird’s eye view of his strict fundamentalist Christian upbringing.

Philip and his brother, Marshall, suffered through their childhood in the face of a graceless, strict, verbally abusive mother and churches that preached hellfire and obedience at all costs. The result was a definite cost in Philip and Marshall’s lives. They experienced a crushing pressure to be perfect. Philip responded by hiding his feelings and Marshall responded by breaking every rule and rejecting Christianity because what he did was never good enough anyway.

Their experiences remind me of two verses from Matthew. Matt. 23:27 “What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.” They were forced to be hyper-focused on looking the part, fracturing their psyches. That is such a heavy burden. Jesus doesn’t condone placing heavy weights and burdens upon another. Matt. 18:6 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.”

Philip’s unfortunate life events began with a father who died when he was an infant. His mother experienced her own difficult circumstances in childhood and the resulting hardness in her soul from her pain, along with a strict religious framework, formed a mother who ran a graceless home.

This type of honest book about the way strict fundamentalist Christianity functions and harms, is rare and needed in our time. Fundamentalism rewards outward appearances more than telling the truth. People get off track and focus on the wrong things. In Philip’s case, his mother was one person outside the home and someone entirely different inside the home. Philip, over time, was able to tell the truth and confront his mother, even though he knew it would hurt, himself included. He was able to do so in a careful, loving, grace-filled and gentle manner in spite of the harm she had done to him. The pain that was wrought in their lives will never completely be resolved this side of heaven as Philip openly shared. I hate that the pain wasn’t/isn’t fully resolved. I think most of us have one or two difficult relationships where it’s a struggle to get along because of the person’s behavior and/or mental health. This book will be insightful to you as you navigate those difficulties in your own life. .

This one is definitely worth a read.

I received an arc copy from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest opinion.

Before I begin, I have never heard of the author and was not certain why he was writing a book. I almost gave up on the book. I started reading because of the tagline...his father's secret upended his life. Let us get this out there right now...the secret is really nothing and really had NO Impact on his childhood, other then the dad died.
The childhood was turbulent and the reader gets to see how religion is weaponized.
I have mixed feeling about this book. In one way, this is a deeply personal account of racism, religious fervor, and mental illness. On the other hand, this book had no impact on me and I didn't know the author so I wasn't sure what I could take away from this book.
Parts of the book were EXTREMELY boring, his college experience, the childhood. I loved the parts about his brother and his descent into mental illness.
I guess if you know the author, this would make an interesting book, if you don't know the author....just skip it.

Thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher for allowing me an ARC for this honest review.

Philip Yancey is a very familiar name to me. He's been a Christian author for decades, and although I couldn't tell you a single book of his that I have read for sure, I'm pretty confident that I have at some point. In my mind, I associate him with readable, intelligent writing.

But I don't know much if anything about his background. So when his publicist wrote, asking if I'd like to review his new memoir, "Where the Light Fell," I was happy to say yes.

There were times, as Yancey describes his upbringing in the church, when I could have sworn he was channeling my memoir. His descriptions of his reluctance at witnessing, reactions to various Bible stories, and even his anecdote about his brother answering the phone with a bit of the Lord's Prayer, all ring very, very familiar to me.

But Yancey had some really tough times. They began early: when he was just a toddler and his brother a few years older, their father died. His dad had contracted polio and was in an iron lung, when his parents decided to "trust God" and sprang Dad from the iron lung, only to see him die soon thereafter. Now the Yanceys faced truly dire circumstances -- a single mom with no income, and her two young boys.

The family lived in a small trailer in Georgia, which they often parked in the parking lots of churches willing to let them hook up for water and electric. Church was a huge part of the family's life, coming mainly through their mom. One big lesson of this book to me, at least, is how damaging one person can be to a child growing up, and in this case that person was their mom. She was a Christian and tried her darndest to get her boys to grow up in the faith, but unfortunately she went about things in a horribly misguided way. "Lord, if you don't want them to fill their father's place as missionaries in Africa, go ahead and take them now. They're yours. I've given them to you," her boys heard their mom pray. Not exactly a ringing example of parental affection, and Yancey recounts how the Biblical story of Hannah became one of his least favorite.

Mrs. Yancey is revered in local churches, although her boys see another side of her. When young Philip bites his brother, his mom bites him back, hard, to teach him a lesson. When neighborhood cats wander through, Mrs. Yancey throws boiling water at them. She teaches young Philip to ride a bike by running after him, hitting him with a switch each time he falls. When he confronts her about this when he is an adult, her response is, "Well, you learned to ride a bike, didn't you?" When older brother Marshall transgresses in some way, his mom's response is often "You'll never make a missionary with that attitude." Yancey writes, "We can't put together the two people who are our mother: the angelic one everyone else sees and the volatile one we live with." Making matters worse is his mother's theological belief that she has achieved sinlessness: "Mother claims she hasn't sinned in twelve years -- longer than I've been alive." It's a little hard for someone believing they're perfect to see their faults.

As Philip grows up, he goes to a Bible college and begins to see the inconsistencies of his upbringing and within the church. I was a little off-put by his many criticisms of the church and its faults (he mainly mentions a lot about racism). I admit that his particular churches may have been guilty of this, although despite the similarities in our upbringings, it's not an issue I saw growing up. He mentions near the end "the more recent anomaly of evangelicals' support for Donald Trump," which to me is code for Yancey being a fairly "liberal Christian." This makes me take many things he says with a grain of salt but that's okay; he's obviously entitled to his own beliefs and takes on various things, as we all are.

Mrs. Yancey's harshness had an even worse effect on Philip's older brother Marshall. Marshall decides to switch from his small Bible College to Wheaton, which Mrs. Yancey sees as a godless, liberal place. She announces to her son, "I'll do whatever it takes to stop you, young man. You listen to me. If you find a way to pull off this plan, I guarantee you one thing. I'll pray every day for the rest of your life that God will break you. Maybe you'll be in a terrible accident and die. That'll teach you. Or, better yet, maybe you'll be paralyzed. Then you'll have to lie on your back and stare at the ceiling and realize what a rebellious thing you've done, going against God's will and everything you've been brought up to believe." Wow -- I have been witness to similar things, but still, it amazes as a parent that a parent could say such a thing to their child. What awful, awful damage they inflict. Sadly, this curse scarred Marshall for life and he is living a broken life, having had a stroke about a decade ago and having dealt with drug abuse and mental illness. He has told Philip that he'll never feel free while his mother is alive. And, just short of 100, Mrs. Yancey still lives.

Philip, meanwhile, married (no children, interestingly) and is the author of numerous best-selling books. He is still a Christian, although his beliefs have evolved. He says that the two major themes he writes on are grace and suffering -- reasonable given his past

Interesting book.

In Where the Light Fell, Christian writer, Philip Yancey shares the story of his life. He gives us a glimpse of how it felt for him growing up without a father, and with an extreme fundamentalist (and possible emotionally ill) mother. He and his older brother survived their early years moving from home to home and finally ending up in a mobile home on Church property. School and college were socially difficult and even disturbing. He shares his struggle with his faith and his doubt, with what is true and what is not true. His honest portrayal of his life was refreshing to me to read as a mother who's son battled conflicting beliefs as a college student, and who strayed away, but was rescued in a different way.

I highly recommend Where the Light Fell to all readers - both those confident in their faith, and especially those who are not. It's inspirational for all of us!

Thank you, Philip Yancey, for sharing this incredible memoir!

And thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read Where the Light Fell.

I have read all of Philip Yancey's books over the last 20 years and consider him the best theological writer since C S Lewis. His books are readable and full of grace.
Yancey always writes from personal experience. This memoir shines new light on all of his writings. Yancey's father died when he was a child because his parents chose to trust that God would heal his polio rather than leave him in an iron lung. His mother dedicated both of her sons to the Lord and was determined that they would be missionaries some day. Her dual personality: spiritual in public and wildly emotional at home, drove both sons away from the church. Philip's brother Marshal remains an atheist while Philip came to grips with his upbringing and found true faith.
This book is an important supplement to Yancey other writings. I feel like I need to reread all of them with the insight I have gained into his life. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have always enjoyed Philip Yancey's writing, which has been helpful to me in times of spiritual crisis. Where the Light Fell is no exception. I appreciated the grace and care with which Yancey approached his childhood. At the end, I only wished he had gone into more detail about his adult life; I do understand, though, that a number of his other books address those years (albeit from a different perspective). Highly recommended for anyone who grew up in conservative or fundamentalist Christianity, and who has since left that theology behind.

Philip Yancey grew up in a dysfunctional family ruled by an undiagnosed bipolar mother and a schizophrenic brother. Yet somehow he never lost his faith. The fact that he survived with his sanity intact is a miracle. As his family moved from one bad situation to another he learned over and over about non-mainstream religion and how the words in the bible could be distorted to fit the minds of those using the bible for their benefit.
This book is a whirlwind trip through religion, dysfunctional families, strict religious practices and what it may take to escape to a normal life.

I will be pondering this book for many days. Philip Yancey calls this a prequel to his other books. The formative years he describes explain an adult lifetime of writing about pain and grace.

His family, like all families, has a generational legacy of dysfunction. But Yancy's family dysfunction is combined with legalistic religiosity, the social dysfunction of the 1950's South, and the profound personal tragedy of losing a father.

Yet a thread of grace runs through the story. Yancey's relationship with his brother, his kind grandparents, the gifts of intelligence and musicality all contribute goodness and hope. There is no tidy ending. Knowing the grace of God does not explain life. But it does allow a person to accept the messiness of it with that same grace - or at least a version of it.

Yancey's writing is brave and I'm glad he has shared it.

I was provided an advance copy through #NetGalley #WheretheLightFell

As always, Yancey gives a compelling story that captures tragedy, disillusionment, the question of what we can trust or believe in the midst of that pain... and how we find that even if we struggle to reconcile our past with our present there is still faith.