Many readers were deeply moved by novelist Reynolds Price's 1994 memoir A Whole New Life in which he described his ten-year battle with spinal cancer. This brief but poignant volume is the author's response to a young medical student stricken with cancer who wants to know whether there's "a Creator who remains aware of the ongoing details of his creation; and, if so, does he care for some or all of those lives?" Letter to a Man in the Fire was delivered as the Jack and Lewis Rudin Lecture at Auburn Theological Seminary.
Answering as an "outlaw" Christian who professes to be neither a trained theologian nor a regular churchgoer, Price talks about his belief in a Creator and four mystical demonstrations of divine love that he has experienced. He describes these openings as being "real as any car wreck." Price goes on to ponder the meaning of suffering with references to Genesis, Job, Aeschylus, Dostoyevsky, and the Bhagavad Gita. In the end, he affirms, "The Creator is far more mysterious than we can suspect or than human organs will ever prove capable of comprehending."