Then Came Joy by Jodi Cowles

Some stories are hard to put down even when you already know how they end.

Jodi Cowles grew up acquainted with grief — and with a faith full of contradictions she wasn't allowed to question. She found her escape in purpose: documenting the work of global organizations serving the world's most marginalized people, pouring herself into others' suffering so she wouldn't have to look at her own.

It almost worked.

Across dangerous assignments in forgotten corners of the world, the walls she'd built around her heart begin to crack — and everything she'd locked away comes flooding back. What follows is a reckoning: with her past, with her faith, with her own capacity to love and be loved.

And then, in a foreign country tangled in corruption and heartbreak and bureaucratic chaos, comes Joy.

Then Came Joy is a memoir of a life lived at full intensity — layered, funny, and at times almost unbearably tense. For anyone who has ever held faith and doubt in the same hand, or loved someone in circumstances stacked against them, this is your story too.