Leaping from the Burning Train

This is a book about a girl who left home without quitemeaning to. One evening, doing her algebra homework, the sixteen-year-oldabruptly realizes the tight-knit fundamentalist community she has been raisedin may not have all the answers it claims to have. Then what to do with herfamiliar, immersive life: Sunday School, church, prayer meetings, vacationBible school, mother-daughter banquets, midnight vigils, revivals, and carwashes?

In college, she discovers the language of poetry. It offersa path—through metaphor and imagery—that transcends the literalism andinsularity of her childhood. Ahead of her lies a career as poet, playwright,essayist, and teacher.

Leaping from the Burning Train tells this story in loving and exuberant detail, withoutthe self-righteousness that sometimes accompanies contemporary memoirs by thosewho have left conservative Christianity. Throughout her journey,including an early acquaintance with death and grief, the figurative languageof poetry remains Jeanne Murray Walker''s constant companion. And that language,over time, sustains her in a deepened, more authentic form of the faith shenever abandoned.