Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

At the beginning of the narrative, author Kate Bowler is 35 years old and an associate professor of church history at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina. Only months prior to the beginning of the narrative, Bowler and her husband, Toban Penner, celebrated the birth of their son, Zach, who was born after a difficult time of failing to conceive. Around the same time, Bowler published her book Blessed (2013), the first comprehensive history of the prosperity gospel.

Bowler writes that Duke was the only school to which she applied as a professor and that the seminary hired Bowler soon after she attained her doctorate, also from Duke. Loved by her students and colleagues, respected by ecclesial historians, employed by her alma mater while she enjoys an enriching home life, Bowler feels all her dreams have come true. Against this positive backdrop, Bowler endures three months of intense, undiagnosed abdominal pain, only to discover she has terminal colon cancer.

Bowler, born in London, writes at length about her upbringing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, adjacent to a Mennonite community with which she interacted extensively. Though she is not a member of the Mennonites, Toban is. Bowler brags about snagging a Mennonite boy for a husband, saying Mennonites make the best boyfriends.