Paper Angels: A Review and Giveaway

If you’ve ever been to Bill Coffey’s blog and read one or two of his posts, you know right off the bat that he is a master storyteller. He writes about everyday life – a meal at a local diner, a conversation with his young son, pumping gas in the rain, watching a boy build a rickety bike ramp. Yet the key to Billy’s writing and his genius is that beneath those observations of the ordinary lay extraordinary insights, wisdom and truth.

On the surface Billy Coffey’s latest book, Paper Angels, is the story of Andy Sommerville, an ordinary fellow who lands in the hospital, the victim of a terrible crime. But like so much of what Billy writes, layer upon layer of story percolate just below the surface of the ordinary.

While recovering from his injuries Andy talks with Elizabeth, a counselor, and together they sort through Andy’s keepsake box, a simple wooden container holding 12 ordinary items collected over the years on the advice of the “Old Man,” Andy’s personal angel. The box contains a baseball hat, some pine needles, a letter to Santa Claus, a wooden cross, a human fingernail, a golf tee, some Dairy Queen paper napkins and other seemingly mundane items.

The mementos themselves may be ordinary, but each one holds an extraordinary story and a deeper truth about Andy’s past, present and future. As Andy and Elizabeth pick one item after the other from the box, a memory spills from each one, recollections separate and distinct from one another, yet woven together to comprise the fabric of Andy’s entire life.

Paper Angels is a spiritual book for sure, but it’s also a book about story, about how each incident, person and place in our lives, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, contributes to who we are and what our purpose is on this Earth.

“We take one thing with us – the narrative of our lives,” Elizabeth tells Andy as she sits next to his hospital bed. “You’re not flesh and bone as much as you are a story, a first chapter and a last and everything in between. In the end, Andy, your story is all you have. And that’s why it needs to be told.”

I loved Paper Angels simply because it’s a well-crafted, page-turning read.  But even more, I’m grateful for Andy Sommerville and Billy Coffey for reminding me that no detail in the story of my own life is too small to go unnoticed.  

“He said that everything means something, no matter how small it is. The familiar is just the extraordinary that’s happened over and over.” – from Billy Coffey’s Paper Angels.

To read more of Billy Coffey's writing visit his blog, What I Learned Today. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook. And please consider buying Paper Angels for someone special on your Christmas list this year. This book would make a perfect gift (click here to purchase).

I'm also giving away one copy of Billy Coffey's book Paper Angels!

Leave a comment on this post to enter the drawing.

If you "Like" my Facebook Writer page, I'll count your entry twice (just make sure you let me know in your comment that you liked me on Facebook so I know!).

I'll announce the winner here on Tuesday, December 20 -- just in time for a cozy read over the holidays!