Author Pete Gall has crafted a tell-all memoir of sorts (even when his secrets aren't exactly palatable by the average evangelical perspective), in which he details his life so far in remarkably transparent and unabashedly honest fashion.

Gall --- who is originally from Zionsville, IN, son to an executive and a housewife, and one of three brothers --- opens his text by describing himself as the "fat blonde guy on the corner in the African print shirt squeezing himself into the yellow taxi." It's 7:15pm, August 1994, and Gall is trying to convince himself and the cabbie that he has revolutionized the hair care industry with one word: "Repeat." When the cabbie begs to disagree with his inflated profit ratio, Gall does what he does best: speaks around the facts with clever words and a lot of false bravado. Seeing through Gall's manipulation attempt, the cabbie clarifies Gall's job description as an advertising copywriter with this simple assessment, "This is what you do, write tricky words?" Gall counters with, "We call it 'creating a need.'"

With this energetic verbal exchange quickly growing to a close, Gall tries to reassure the cabbie that creating a need is a valuable and worthy trade, because in Gall's words, "We're all after something to tell us about ourselves." The author then tries to convince himself of this final statement by describing a program he just watched on the collector crab and how it attaches bits of whatever he finds on the sea floor to his shell to camouflage itself from its enemies. Similarly, he notes, humans do it all the time with products, services, impressions, approaches, tones and movements, to cover or hide what they don't want the world to see and measure them by.

With this weighty introduction laid out, Gall then introduces the reader to his life in Chicago, living in a city he's not too crazy about, involved with a woman who has been seeing another man, and detesting his high-powered position and the projects he is paid to sell. In fast-paced motion, he quits his job and moves west, not knowing where he'll end up. All he knows is that he wants to place God at the center of his life and realizes that trying to sell "needs" to people is soul-sickening at best. Idols, as Gall refers to them, are only good for two things: "Making us feel important and making us feel loved." Enough said.

Gall quits his job and heads toward Denver where his best friend David lives. En route, he stops to see his family, who don't understand his decision to leave a great job without another one in line. Gall quickly finds himself broke, then lands various low-paying service-type jobs where he learns a lot about loving what society generally terms “the unlovable folk,” who teach Gall more about Christ and genuine faith than any traditional church could ever do. He discusses his heartaches and failed romantic relationships, trying to understand how much pain can co-exist with a joyful heart, the disjunct between believing and struggling to make it through the day, and not understanding why God isn't talking back.

Readers will value Gall's approachability to sensitive topics often sidestepped by the church. His text is real, raw and so refreshing. And perhaps most important is that, through all his forays, Gall's faith emerges stronger and more solid than ever.