Announcing: Braving the Truth

For the first time, Rachel Held Evans' online essays will be available in a book

Jan 06, 2026

Hi friends,

I have some lovely news for you this week. Over the past year or two, I’ve been quietly working on a new book project on behalf of Rachel Held Evans’ family. And it’s finally available for preorder! Below, I’ve got the details on the book, the contributors, how to preorder, and a bit of the behind-the-scenes personal stuff, too.

The book is called Braving the Truth: Essential Essays for Reckoning with and Reimagining Faith by Rachel Held Evans.

Official Summary

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Held Evans inspired a generation of questioning and evolving believers. This book offers a collection of her most impactful essays—in print for the first time.

For a generation finding their footing in life after evangelicalism, Rachel Held Evans was one of the most trusted and beloved voices of our time. Stubborn in her hope, courageous in her questions, and devoted to inclusivity, her online writing was a sanctuary to the millions who read her words daily. Her death to a sudden illness in 2019 invoked a global outpouring of stories of her legacy and influence.

Today, her words still speak, and now for the first time, fans old and new can experience her most viral and enduring essays in print. Braving the Truth is an anthology and keepsake collection letting readers borrow the bravery Rachel was best known for. Edited by New York Times bestselling author and Rachel’s dear friend Sarah Bessey, and interspersed with reflections from Matthew Paul Turner, Shauna Niequist, Lisa Sharon Harper, Glennon Doyle, and more, this special volume tackles topics such as:

“An Evolving Faith:” On doubt, asking questions, and liberation from certainty
“That Unholy American Trinity:” On patriarchy, white supremacy, and religious nationalism
“Casseroles and Kingdom of the Hungry:” On the church
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell:” On gender and sexuality
“Still a Bible Nerd:” On Scripture, biblical literalism, and a better way
and more

“If you want to understand the Church today, you need to understand Rachel Held Evans,” so writes Sarah Bessey. Thoughtful yet down-to-earth, immediate and timeless, this essay collection is a gift from the past to bring into the future—a treasury to revitalize, validate, embolden, and return to again and again.

Available on February 24, 2026 everywhere books are sold.

Braving the Truth

And in some very good news: we have already received a Starred Review at Publishers Weekly, too! They even said, “The result is an excellent introduction to Evans and her powerful model of holding Christianity to account.” 🥹

Us, in 2014? I think. We were at a conference in Nashville.

Behind the Scenes

It has been an incredible honour to undertake this work at the request of Rachel’s widower, Dan. Well, an honour but also a heavy lift, to be honest. Rachel was a beloved friend and the time of our lives represented in this book is incredibly precious to me. Revisiting and meditating on every single post she wrote over those years as I discerned what to include and how to assemble this book was bittersweet, to say the least. There were many days when I just laid down on the carpet to cry for a while, but then there were days when I laughed and rejoiced and remembered with gratitude, too. In the book’s introduction, I confess that this is the closest I’ve come to time travel. I’ve also had to travel through my own grief almost daily over these months and months of labour, but ultimately, Rachel’s words and work did in me what they have always done: she’s given me hope and let me borrow her bravery. And it’s that same hope and bravery that resides in these pages now for you.

We’ve gathered together Rachel’s online work for a whole new generation of readers as well as for all of us who were there in real time for these moments. From the introduction:

“This book is a testimony to Rachel and her work, yes, but I have come to realize that this book is a memorial for all of us who were evolving alongside Rachel. It is an artifact of a moment in the life of the church and the internet. It is a love letter to her fellow bloggers, her commenters, her readers, even her critics. And it is the story of how one Southern millennial woman troubled the establishment, gathered up the misfits, told our stories, evolved in public, and helped us love God and each other just a bit better in real time.

If you want to understand the church today, you need to understand Rachel Held Evans. If you want to understand the rise of what she used to call “the unholy American trinity of patriarchy, white supremacy, and religious nationalism,” well, you can start here. If you want to understand why so many folks are deconstructing their faith, this is as good a place as any to begin. And if you want to understand why so many of us remember her, and will always remember her, with such love, this book is for you.”

This book owes a lot to our publishing team at HarperOne. I am grateful for their kindness, support, stewardship, and wisdom as we undertook the project, especially from editor extraordinaire Stephanie Smith. What a joy to work with her at last! And of course, a huge thank you to Rachel’s agent (and mine) Rachelle Gardner for continuing to steward her legacy in publishing so thoughtfully.

It’s a joy to offer this book to you now…even if my hands are trembling a bit.

Preorder, preorders

The royalties for this book are entirely and completely for Rachel’s family, not me, so be forewarned: I’m going to be utterly shameless here.

Please preorder your copy now and send this announcement along or the link along to any friend of yours who has been alongside of you in this journey, too. I think this book of essays would be an excellent candidate for your book clubs or community groups, too!

Braving the Truth is now available for preorder at your local and/or independent bookstores as well as these online retailers:

I will hopefully have info for UK readers soon so stay tuned!

Audiobook: There is an audiobook version for the book as well! I recorded my own sections of the book for that so you’ll hear my voice as well as Dan’s for the Foreword, but Marni Penning did an incredible job narrating the majority of the book. If you like to listen to audiobooks, this is a great one.

And if you can’t swing a preorder right now, there are a lot of other ways to support the book. You can help spread the word on social media, tell your friends, add it to your reading social media sites like Storygraph or Goodreads, recommend it for your church library, and even request it at your public library (most public libraries will order a book in for the system at the request of their readers so if you don’t see it in the system, you can ask them to order it. That way it’s not only available for you but for your whole community to read, too.)

The Contributors

Early in this book’s development, we discerned something important to the book’s format. After all, Rachel was deeply committed to community and her blog was a gathering place, not only for commenters, but for other writers and leaders. She was probably the most generous person I’ve ever known in this regard. She never hoarded her platform but continually looked for ways to lift up other writers and leaders, offering space, advice, contacts, encouragement, and so much more.

Basically, how could I put together a book of her online work without an embodied example of how she chose to steward the online space? So I reached out to a lot of people who were alongside of us in those years or whose work meant a lot to Rachel’s own evolution to ask them to reflect or offer context on particular essays or moments at this time. To a person, they were unfailingly supportive.

You’ll find their meaningful reflections scattered throughout the book. I think their words will particularly help readers who are new to Rachel’s writing to understand just why so many of us remember her and point to her blog as a hinge point in the history of the Church.

Thank you to each contributor. Your support, kindness, and perspective makes the book so much more in every way and I am grateful!

Finally

I am acutely aware of how much Rachel meant to so many of you. I know what her influence meant in your life, your marriages, your churches, your callings, your work, your faith, your way of moving through the world. I am incredibly tender about that and so I want you to know that I have held you in my heart, just as she held you in hers when she wrote, as this book came together.

She was always writing for her kindred spirits, not her critics, and I hope this book reflects that same posture.

I hope you feel Rachel’s love for you, for the Church, for her community, for the possibilities of hope, for her family, for the world, and for her people on every page.

February 24, my friends. Thank you for preordering. Thank you for loving my friend and remembering her with me.

I really hope you love this one like I love it. It means a lot to me.

Love S.

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