Against The Wind

In her own words, the inspiring true story of an endurance runner who finds her character put to the test by an unthinkable personal tragedy.

Baum, a youth conference speaker and host of a young adults' radio program, provides an engaging biography of a revolutionary Christian in early 20th-century Germany. Inspired by religious vision and forced by his father to study theology, Arnold moved increasingly away from the state church, inspired an antibourgeois youth movement, and founded a community based on "common table, community of goods, communal work" but dedicated to marriage and to children. Arnold also influenced Barth, Tillich, and Buber and opposed Hitler. He is hence an important figure for both historians and scholars of contemporary religious thought, but this first biography on him is accessible and enjoyable reading for general audiences as well.

Juan flees Madrid and an incestuous relationship with his sister, Ana, working at a mine on the Andalucian coast. When his friendship with Rosario, a local shop girl, becomes romance, Ana shows up wanting to rekindle their affair. He resists at first, but she stays, asserting that Juan is the only man she can ever love. Juan distances himself from Rosario. The mine has problems: high cancer rates in the area caused by poorly stored radioactive waste. A foreign safety engineer, Petersen, tries to connect with Ana, is rebuffed, but lets her stay in his sea-front bungalow. Juan seeks her out to demand she leave, only to argue with Petersen. Death, desire, and longing play out.