A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER Yaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national best seller Homegoing is a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama. Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

Gifty has endured more than her fair share. But what she does with the hard stuff is turn her pain into something concrete. To better understand. She doesn't want to let the trouble that has been heaped upon her family undo her.Gifty's family, mother, father, and baby boy, immigrated to the United States from Ghana, landing in Alabama, where she was later born. Her family's circumstances did not turn out to be what they imagined. Her mother suffered the indignity of racism and working brutal hours at her thankless job, for what she hoped would be a better life, to provide her children with an education.Their beloved son, Nana, whose future was so bright, as everyone kept reminding them, went awry. Gifty, the youngest, knew nothing of her family's roots, nor did she fit into this foreign southern land. We come to know her for her work as a scientist, working her way through her lab, trying to come to terms with her brother's tragic demise, through her research with mice, and making sense of the utter loss that has woven its way into her mother's veins as well. Gifty's studies keep her alive, but in a sense, the work is also somewhat of an atonement for what she was unable to do for Nana. Perhaps even for her mother.Searching for answers about addictive behavior and depression - through science, a higher calling, or desperately avoiding love. Gifty is at a loss. She is desperately trying. She carries an enormous weight and you can't help but bear the heaviness alongside her.Psychologically astute, relevant to the world we are in, and a reading experience of the sublime.

The Lord's Supper (or Eucharist) has often been a subject of intense debate in the church. What is often lost in this debate is the significance of the relationship of the Eucharist to Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples, which was a Passover--or Passover-like--meal. Moreover, the Last Supper connects back to various meals in Jesus' earthly ministry. And it looks forward to the great messianic banquet as fulfillment of Jewish expectations. In exploring these connections, this book focuses on the three motifs of "new creation," "hospitality," and "hope" in Christ. Most significantly, when we break the bread and drink the wine (or juice) together we are asserting the reality of the new creation in Christ, affirming God's grace, forgiveness, and cruciform love which is to be embodied in the Christian community, and anticipating the day when God's present and ongoing work of restoration, justice, and reconciliation will ultimately prevail. The Supper, then, is basically a condensed summary of the story of God's plan of redemption. Hesselgrave brings together biblical, theological, ethical, and social insights in a way that deepens our understanding of the meaning and practical significance of biblical texts related to this central ordinance of the church.

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