The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be - by Brian Doyle (Paperback)

About the Book

"Proems, taut tales, small stories with rhythm and blues and grace and bruise and laughter between the lines. Brian Doyle's The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be is a book of cadenced notes on the swirl of miracle and the holy of attentiveness; a book about children and birds, love and grief and everything alive, which is to say all prayers. Brian Doyle's uncategorizable form is the brief story dressed like a poem but with the loose lyricism and verve of an essay. Here are chants and litanies, like gentle songs to the sacrament of every moment"--

Book Synopsis

Proems, taut tales, small stories with rhythm and blues and grace and bruise and laughter between the lines. Brian Doyle's The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be is a book of cadenced notes on the swirl of miracle and the holy of attentiveness; a book about children and birds, love and grief and everything alive, which is to say all prayers.

Review Quotes

Brian Doyle focuses on daily life experiences, allowing familiar stories and ordinary encounters to emerge as genuinely humorous and sad, noble and emotionally rewarding! The poems tug the heart both through story and the simplicity of superb writing. The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be is fresh and thoroughly engaging. An entrancing poetry fest!Bishop Sylvester Ryan, Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Monterey

Brian Doyle is a genius at unveiling the sacramentality of popsicles, rebounds, cedar needles, four year olds, the snap of a baseball bat, scuffling in leaves, owl feathers, attentive doctors, a pint, the chinook, old confessionals, storytelling cops, ratty jerseys. He helps us appreciate the sheer grace and blessing of our own momentous minutiae.Kathy Coffey, Author of When the Saints Came Marching In: Exploring the Frontiers of Grace in America