"In April 1997 Reynolds Price received an eloquent letter from a reader of his cancer memoir A Whole New Life. The correspondent, a young medical student diagnosed with cancer himself and facing his own mortality, asked the difficult questions above.

The two began a long-distance correspondence, culminating in Price's thoughtful response, originally delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary, and now expanded onto the printed page as Letter to a Man in the Fire."--BOOK JACKET. "Harvesting a variety of sources - diverse religious traditions, classical and modern texts, and a lifetime of personal experiences, interactions, and spiritual encounters - Price meditates on God's participation in our fate."--BOOK JACKET.

"With candor and sympathy, Reynolds Price - for nearly five decades a serious student of religion in general and the Gospels in particular - offers the reader such a rich variety of tools to explore these questions as to place this work in the company of other great testaments of faith from St. Augustine to C.S. Lewis."--BOOK JACKET.