Leaves That Blew Away: A Memoir

"Sometimes, God isn't just walking in the storm, He is the storm."Raw and powerful, "a wild, emotional ride that grabs you by the heart." In a profoundly honest and moving story marked by personal loss and failure, Todd Allen pulls back the curtain and ushers the reader into his world, reliving the peaks and valleys of a life spent in the shadowlands. His deep, intimate style pull readers in and takes them on a journey framed by the contours of a conservative Christian upbringing. Rural, evangelical churches, one-room schools and summer Bible camps dot the midwestern landscape of a sheltered world with Jesus squarely at the center. While candid and pointed, his reflections on life and church and faith are written with a novelist's eye and viewed through a lens of sentimental nostalgia for simpler times. As loss piles on loss, we watch as a family breaks apart and a childhood faith founders in the storms of life. We walk with him as disappointment with Christianity leads him to walk away from that faith for nearly a decade. This is a story of faith and forgiveness, loss and failure, of a broken and wandering heart and a God who never lets go.