Cathedral: an Illness and a Healing 1st edition

?This is the story about an aging man who builds a holy place in his backyard. It involves bugs, lousy weather, cancer and spiritual waverings.?

Thus begins Bill Henderson?s Cathedral: An Illness and a Healing, a memoir about cancer and construction.

On the face of it Cathedral is most akin to Henderson?s Tower: Faith, Vertigo and Amateur Construction (FSG), a Thoreau-esque chronicle of building a tall structure on the grounds of his hilltop property in Maine. But Cathedral is more overtly a spiritual memoir like his Simple Gifts: One Man?s Search for Grace (S&S), a tribute to the pleasures of singing hymns.

Like all his books, Cathedral is equal parts wisdom, self-deprecation, laughs, aching honesty, and inspiration. And, like his cathedral itself, it is lovingly constructed.