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Book four actually tricked me.  I had planned for this latest Mitch Albom book to be a fiction story, like his last few (I had read For One More Day a while ago).  Turns out, that little “A True Story” tag on the front was actually correct.  So much for maintaining my balance with fiction/non-fiction.

The book is similar to his most famous effort, Tuesdays with Morrie, in that it’s basically a story of two people (one in Morrie’s case), told through Albom’s interactions with them over a period of time.  There’s also enough back story thrown in when necessary that you get a good picture of who the characters are.  The two people the book focuses on are Albert Lewis, or “The Reb” as he is known in the book, who was Albom’s lone rabbi for the first 50 years of his life and Henry Convington, founder of the I Am My Brother’s Keeper ministries in Detroit.

Most of the book talks about struggles with faith, who has it, who doesn’t, who loses it, and how some regain it.  The conversations with The Reb were enlightening if you’ve never talked with someone who was secure enough in their faith to discuss it without being defensive.  Meanwhile, Henry’s story was more about falling prey to the temptations that come with growing up poor in a bad neighborhood, trying to turn your life around (a couple times) after hitting rock bottom, and, in my favorite couple pages, doubting that it’s possible to ever redeem yourself after having done so much wrong but still doing as much good as you can to try.

If you liked Tuesdays With Morrie, odds are you’ll also like this and it will probably make you cry once or twice.  If you didn’t like that book or find Albom’s style of writing to be off-putting, then you’re not going to get anything here.

Have a Little Faith: A True Story