The old Quaker expression “Way Opens” describes the serendipitous unfolding of God’s will for a person or community. For accomplished Quaker writer Patricia Wild and for us, her readers, way opens unexpectedly, sometimes painfully, and at last redemptively in this powerful, beautifully crafted spiritual memoir. From the very first page, we are drawn into a twisting odyssey of faith confronting the complexities of White privilege and American racism. Patricia Wild writes prose like a poet and tells stories like a trusted friend or favorite neighbor. Her gift is humility, tenderness, humor, humanity, and a wisdom born of experience and struggle. Way Opens establishes Patricia Wild among our finest contemporary spiritual writers, Quaker and otherwise. Profoundly moving, healing, and inspiring, this book bears eloquent witness to the pain of past and present, and the promise of our future.

-Alexander Levering Kern 

Quaker activist and poet, editor of Becoming Fire: Spiritual Writing from Rising Generations, chaplain, Brandeis University.