Atheism Memoir

When Alice Greczyn's parents felt called by God to exchange worldly employment for heavenly provision, they followed their faith into homelessness with five children and a cat in tow. Homeschooled and avowed never to kiss a man until her wedding day, Alice had plans to escape by becoming a missionary nurse—plans that were put on hold with the opening of an unexpected door: the opportunity to be a Hollywood actress. What followed was a test of faith unlike any she had prepared for, one that forced her to learn to survive without the only framework for life she had ever known.

In this deeply revealing and engaging autobiography, Herb Silverman tells his iconoclastic life story. He takes the listener from his childhood as an Orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, where he stopped fasting on Yom Kippur to test God's existence, to his adult life in the heart of the Bible Belt, where he became a legendary figure within America's secular activist community and remains one of its most beloved leaders. Never one to shy from controversy, Silverman relates many of his high-profile battles with the Religious Right.

Atticus Blake is an unsuspecting young gay boy who, early on in life, was derailed from the true admission of who he was. Having the influences of obsessive-compulsive disorder, religion, confusion, love, and obsession, he hides who he is from everyone he loves. That is, until his doubts overcame his fear of learning and led him to reason, rationality, and, most of all, acceptance of his sexuality.

A Walk Through the Wilderness takes the listener on a harrowing adventure through the rigid psychological manipulation of a fundamentalist cult, the many joys and sorrows during the years of recovery afterwards, the seeming hopelessness of infertility, and finally to a joy realized. Being raised in a liberal Christian home, Dan never imagined the sorrows he would face as his faith evolved into fundamentalist cult status. For many years, he lived under a rigid religious control structure that managed every aspect of his life and resulted in deep emotional scarring.

Okay, let's get one thing straight. I didn't write this book to de-convert anyone. Honest. So, if you're a devout Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Mormon, Catholic, Scientologist, or whatever, you just keep on doing what you're doing.