How Dante Can Save Your Life

Following the death of his little sister and the publication of his New York Times bestselling memoir The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, Dreher found himself living in the small community of Starhill, Louisiana where he grew up. But instead of the fellowship he hoped to find, he discovered that fault lines within his family had deepened. Dreher spiraled into depression and a stress-related autoimmune disease. Doctors told Dreher that if he didn’t find inner peace, he would destroy his health. Soon after, he came across The Divine Comedy in a bookstore and was enchanted by its first lines, which seemed to describe his own condition.

In the months that followed Dante helped Dreher understand the mistakes and mistaken beliefs that had torn him down and showed him that he had the power to change his life. Dreher knows firsthand the solace and strength that can be found in Dante’s great work, and distills its wisdom for those who are lost in the dark wood of depression, struggling with failure (or success), wrestling with a crisis of faith, alienated from their families or communities, or otherwise enduring the sense of exile that is the human condition.

Inspiring, revelatory, and packed with penetrating spiritual, moral, and psychological insights How Dante Can Save Your Life is a book for people, both religious and secular, who find themselves searching for meaning and healing. Dante told his patron that he wrote his poem to bring readers from misery to happiness. It worked for Rod Dreher. Dante saved Rod Dreher’s life—and in this book, Dreher shows you how Dante can save yours.

Following the death of his little sister, journalist Rod Dreher wrote a best-selling memoir, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, of pain, loss, and redemption. Despite the book's success he is confronted with another personal crisis—one that would destroy his health and send him into a spiral of depression. That is when Dreher happened upon a cobwebbed copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy in a secondhand bookstore. Over the following weeks, he would join the author on a vivid, wrenching, and ultimately healing pilgrimage through Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, discovering that the medieval masterpiece offers a surprisingly practical way of reimagining and confronting your own problems. A potent mixture of Alain De Botton's massive bestseller How Proust Can Change Your Life and Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life—a touch of trenchant literary criticism with a heavy helping of spiritual insight—Dreher has written a practical book meant for those who find themselves untethered and lost in the modern world. He reveals Dante’s penetrating (but often hidden) spiritual, moral, and psychological insights, showing how they can deliver the reader from misery and confusion to happiness and peace. Dante saved Rod Dreher's life; now he details, in crisp, jargon-free prose, how he can save yours.