The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be

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.

Brian Doyle (1957-2017) was the longtime editor of the University of Portland's award-winning Portland Magazine. His essays appeared in iHarper's, The Atlantic Monthly, U.S. Catholic, First Things, Christian Century, America, and The American Scholar. He was the author of two Liturgical Press books, A Shimmer of Something: Lean Stories of Spiritual Substance and The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be: Prose Prayers and Cheerful Chants against the Dark as well as a contributor to Give Us This Day.