Escape Routes
For People Who Feel Trapped in Life’s Hells
Johann Christoph Arnold
After decades of listening to people, Johann Christoph Arnold still marvels at our capacity to make life miserable for ourselves and one another. Escape Routes, his tenth book, aims to show the only sure way out of these self-made hells.
In contrast to the makeovers and quick fixes hawked by popular culture, Escape Routes offers a tougher prescription. Using real-life stories, Arnold exposes the common seeds of loneliness, frustration, alienation, and despair, and gives us tools to uproot them from our lives. The choices he presents are clear: “to be selfish or selfless to forgive or to hate to burn with lust or with love to defend your personal power, or dismantle it.”
Why stake your hopes on some eternal hereafter, Arnold asks, when you can taste heaven right here and now? No matter your problems, or who you are, this book will help you on your way, provided you’re ready to take its medicine.
Praise for Escape Routes
Andy Crouch
Re:generation Quarterly
Not many authors pack as much wisdom, and as little fluff, into a page as Arnold. If you’re wondering who you want to be when you grow up, Escape Routes offers a road map to real life. If you’re already grown up and wondering if you missed something, this book offers a hard but real path to rebirth.
Ari L. Goldman
Columbia University
Beautiful…Arnold does not give us a magic formula for coping with life’s hells–there is none–but gently reminds us that the first step begins with ourselves. Drawing on the wisdom of men and women of many faiths, this book is one that can be appreciated by all.
Shira Dicker
National Foundation for Jewish Culture
Escape Routes is a gem of a book from an infinitely wise pen–a lucid, poetic, and pragmatic companion for “people who feel trapped in life’s hells.” Though rooted in the author’s personal faith, it transcends religious boundaries and has universal, ecumenical appeal.
William Marvin
St. Bede’s Anglican Chuch, Birmingham, AL
The honest directness, the unblushing face of life as it is–that’s what this book offers, and I am impressed by it.
Mary Carroll
St. Anne’s Church, Bristol, CT
Very moving and convicting. I will read it more than once.”
Sr. Ann LaForest
OCD, Beacon, NY
The stories in this book are priceless and compelling. And if we find their message unwelcome, it is only because we all tend to resist grace.
Foreword Magazine
A humble and thoughtful offering…with stories and personal anecdotes that gently urge readers to a more meaningful life.
Booklist
Arnold dispenses much practical advice while exposing the roots of such human perennials as loneliness, frustration, alienation, and despair. Sometimes his medicine is Zen-like in its common sense.
