Reflections on the death of a teenage son
A Powerful Memoir of Grief, Faith, and Hope
This extraordinary memoir offers a roadmap through the challenging landscape of profound loss.
When Gary Hauk's teenage son, Thomas, suffered a cardiac arrest in the middle of one terrible night, it launched Hauk into an unexpected journey through grief, faith, and the search for meaning.
Why Readers Love This Book:
- Raw and honest — Intimate emails, journal entries, and theological reflections
- Beautifully written — By an accomplished academic and person of faith
- Universally helpful — Offers comfort to anyone facing loss, regardless of faith background
- Powerful framework — Uses the metaphor of Holy Saturday (the time between death and resurrection) to understand grief
- Highly praised — Endorsed by university presidents, religious leaders, and scholars
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What This Book Offers
Through intimate emails, journal entries, and profound theological reflections, Gary Hauk documents the seven-week period from his son's hospitalization to his eventual passing, and the transformative journey that followed.
As both an academic and a person of faith, Hauk offers a vulnerable, beautifully written perspective on this heart-wrenching experience. His raw honesty about struggles with faith and meaning offers comfort to those facing similar challenges.
The memoir's powerful metaphor of Holy Saturday — the time between death and resurrection — provides a framework for understanding the liminal space of grief.
This remarkable memoir offers more than just a story of loss — it provides signposts and waysides for anyone navigating the complex terrain of grief and faith.
Details: 5×8 in, 148 pp, US $17.99, ISBN 979-8-9903562-7-6
📣 Read What Others Are Saying
"A piercingly painful and hauntingly beautiful memoir, Holy Saturday gives utterance to the day of unspeakable grief and silence in the face of a terrible journey of dying. With soul-searching questions and unrevealed mysteries, it is a love story of a son and father, a family, and a community."
— Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe, retired general secretary, United Methodist Board of Church and Society
"Gary Hauk's meditation on the loss of his son is a gorgeously written lesson in grief. Written from a particular Christian perspective, it nonetheless contains universal wisdom. We learn from this teacher how to understand and accept the grief we all must bear when we lose our loved ones.... Most importantly, we learn from this teacher about the hard work it takes to do what the Jewish tradition asks us to do: make a memory a blessing. A must read for anyone who has experienced loss—that is, all of us."
— Laurie Patton, president, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
"Once begun it became compelling, with an inner spiritual momentum that possessed me. It is a fierce and lovely meditation, laced with a profound tristesse."
— Ambassador James T. Laney, president emeritus, Emory University
"Holy Saturday offers no easy answer to the fact of death. It doesn't cheat. But it resolves to go forward with strength, patience, faith, and clarity of mind. And to me—a person of no religious faith—it strengthens my mind as I look at death."
— William M. Chace, president emeritus, Emory University
"What Gary Hauk's wonderfully gifted pen has produced is simply a masterpiece. It's a stunning work that will help many readers who have suffered the death of their loved ones, especially their children. What a remarkable gift of love and hope offered to the world."
— John Witte Jr., McDonald Professor of Law and Religion and author of Faith, Freedom, and Family
About the Author
Gary S. Hauk, PhD served in the President's Office of Emory University for more than thirty years, working with four Emory presidents. He has taught freshman English, ethics, and history, and in 2015 was named the first official historian of Emory University.
Gary earned his PhD in religion from the Laney Graduate School at Emory and holds BA and MA degrees in English from Lehigh University and a divinity degree from the Methodist Theological School in Ohio. He has written or edited five books about Emory, including Emory as Place: Meaning in a University Landscape (University of Georgia Press, 2019).
Since retiring from Emory in January 2020, he has continued to work as a freelance editor and writer and as an advocate for the role of the humanities in civic life.