Frederick Buechner has elevated the memoir to an art form. Telling Secrets is the third of four memoirs, preceded by The Sacred Journey and Now and Then, followed by The Eyes of the Heart. If his earlier memoirs focused more on his external life, this memoir cuts to the heart. As always, Buechner is honest—not just in the surface-level sense of telling readers the truth. More than that, Buechner’s writing reveals the heart of a man seeking to learn the truth of his own life.

These pages centre on his father’s suicide and the way that shaped Buechner’s life. This is the family secret he chose to tell. He comes to the conclusion that although God speaks through the various situations we’re placed in, God also speaks directly:

I have come to believe more and more that God also speaks through the fathomless quiet of the holy place in the White Tower within us all which is beyond the power of anything that happens to us to touch although many things that happen to us block our access to it, make us forget even that it exists. (105)

It is this profound integration of theology and self reflection that makes Buechner’s writing—even about the dark areas of his life—so compelling.

Buechner, Frederick. Telling Secrets. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.