Kate Braestrup talk and book signing

Award-winning author Kate Braestrup will be visiting Fairfield in October for a talk and book signing.  Kate’s first book, Here If You Need Me, was a New York Times bestseller and the winner of the  Barnes & Noble Discover Award for nonfiction.  In this book, Kate writes about her experiences as a Maine Warden Service chaplain with a blend of sensitivity and self-deprecating humor.

Kate took a bit of a circuitous route to becoming a chaplain; she was busy writing and raising four kids when her husband Drew, who was a state trooper, was tragically killed in a car accident.  Kate picked up where he left off on his mission to become a Unitarian Universalist minister, attending Bangor Theological Seminary and becoming a chaplain for the Warden Service.  She was ordained in 2004.

Kate’s first book, Here If You Need Me, chronicles her daily life as she counsels families whose loved ones are missing or dead and watches over the wardens themselves as they conduct search and rescue missions.  As Kate continues this ministering, she meets Simon van der Ven through a friend.  At the time, he seems too perfect – ‘he is just so wretchedly wonderful, it’s disconcerting.”  This includes the fact that Simon tans to a deep bronze while Kate just burns and that he is able to laugh at himself, which she finds a bit unnerving.  Over time, Kate writes about her own and others’ experiences with love, creating her second novel, Marriage and Other Acts of Charity.  Despite her fear of marrying again, Kate eventually realizes that it is meant to be and dives in.  Kate’s truly objective approach to this topic is humorous, engaging and enlightening.

Kate’s most recent novel, Beginner’s Grace: Bringing Prayer To Life, offers prayers for situations in which words might fail: times of anxiety, helplessness or grief.  Beautifully written, with her signature stores of faith in action in real life, Beginner’s Grace explains how to tap into grace with prayer – as well as how to pray, when to pray, and what to pray.