What exactly is this bizarre thing called Forgiveness? Why should we want to forgive? How does one do it? How do I? How could I?Forgiveness is probably difficult for most of us. We hurt others. We are hurt by others. We need to be forgiven. We need to forgive. Neither seeking nor granting pardon seems natural. Yet if we are to enjoy lives of harmony, peace, and joy, forgiveness alone provides the way. The ugly option is enslavement to a painful past.Author J. Randall O'Brien, the president of Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, reminds us through stories and personal experience that having a heart for forgiveness is not the best way to enjoy life-it is the only way. Nothing else works. O'Brien invites us to discover the way to peace and healing through being set free by forgiveness.

In 1961, 16-year-old Brenda Travis was a youth leader of the NAACP branch in her hometown of McComb, Mississippi. She joined in the early stages of voter registration, and when the Freedom Rides and direct action reached McComb, she and two SNCC workers sat-in at the local bus station. That led to her first arrest and jailing, which resulted in her being expelled and leading a protest walkout from her high school. Thrown in jail for a second time, she was eventually released on the condition that she leave the state. Her poignant memoir describes what gave her the courage at such a young age to fight segregation, how the movement unfolded in Mississippi, and what happened after she was forced to leave her family, friends, and fellow activists. One of the civil rights workers who befriended her in McComb was the legendary activist Bob Moses, who contributed the Foreword to her book. A white educator and Vietnam war hero, J. Randall O’Brien, was deeply inspired by learning about her courage, and he contributed the Afterword.