Desert Daughters Desert Sons: Rethinking the Christian Desert Tradition

2021 Catholic Media Association Award honorable mention award in spirituality - classical. In Desert Daughters Desert Sons professor Rachel Wheeler argues that a new reading of the texts of the Christian desert tradition is needed to present the (often) anonymous women who inhabit the texts. Though these women may have been included by storytellers to provide a foil to the exemplary men in the stories foreground Wheeler demonstrates how womens persistence in places they were not welcome witnesses to truths about where wisdom may be sought and found. In this book Wheeler allows these womens stories to critique the desert impulse that can create a spiritual life devoid of social relationships and responsibility.