Things Seen and Unseen

“Gracefully written and moving ... Things Seen and Unseen starts with Nora Gallagher entering the labyrinth of her life ... and ultimately it leads to the center of her being.” —The Boston Globe

It started with an occasional Sunday, a “tourist’s” visit to a local church. Eventually Nora Gallagher entered into a yearlong journey to discover her
faith and a relationship with God, using the Christian calendar as her compass.

Whether writing about her brother’s battle against cancer, talking to homeless men about the World Series, or questioning the afterlife (“One world at a time”), Gallagher draws us into a world of journeys and mysteries, yet grounded in a gritty reality. She braids together the symbols of the Christian calendar, the events of a year in one church, and her own spiritual journey, each strand combed out with harrowing intimacy. Thought provoking and profoundly perceptive, Things Seen and Unseen is a remarkable demonstration that “the road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary.”

“Like Kathleen Norris in Amazing Grace, Gallagher is renewing the language of ultimate concerns.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“The deep serenity that suffuses Gallagher's work, the lyrical cadences in which she writes, do not blunt the sharp edges of what she discovered in her quest for meaning.” —Los Angeles Times