"It's not hard to imagine being drawn into a good conversation about things that matter with Karen Marsh. At the same time playful and profound, with heart and mind she invites us in, opening her deep, rich reading of the 'sainted ones' of the centuries, making them be what they must be: ordinary men and women who lived lives near to God--with every possible heartache and hope. But that's the good gift of this book: it makes these saints be sinners like us, people who long for honest faith, honest hope, and honest love. Vintage Saints and Sinners is a book for the everyman and everywoman, pilgrims across the centuries that we are."

--Steven Garber, principal of the Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture, author of Visions of Vocation

"Marsh gives us a glimpse into the lives of these well-known Christian thinkers and practical theologians, not from a purely biographical perspective, but through the lens of what she has learned from their lives."

--Tiffany Malloy, Englewood Review of Books, Advent 2017

"Marsh honors the beauty and goodness of these saints' lives without allowing us to dismiss them too easily. In so doing, we can appreciate that they are simultaneously saints and sinners--just like us."

--Jeff J. Myers, The Presbyterian Outlook, December 11, 2017

"Marsh thoughtfully presents their notable activities with care, and the assumption of reading simply for holiness and mastery of mystical contemplation is undone. Instead, this survey demonstrates that faith in action is what calls all Christians. Accompanying reading suggestions and 'conversation starter' questions recommend this title to book groups. . . . A quiet journey into dynamic lives of faith."

--Library Journal, October 15, 2017

"Righteousness, we know, is endlessly complicated. In Vintage Saints and Sinners, Karen Marsh shows that it's also a living process, a communal drama of joy and liveliness into which we're invited. With wit, care, and deep lyricism, Karen helps us to see that saints--who are also always sinners--are on our side. Where we are, they've already been. We get to meet their messy witness with our own. One day at a time."

--David Dark, author of Life's Too Short to Pretend You're Not Religious

"Sit down and pour yourself a glass of Karen Wright Marsh's Vintage Saints and Sinners. At first sip, you are transported into delightful stories of Christians past. As you drink more deeply, Vintage Saints and Sinners engages difficult issues of faith, doubts and loves, wisdom, and the practice of justice in the world. This is a gracious book full of charming prose and profound truths with just the right complexity of spiritual insight for everyday life. Taste and see!"

--Diana Butler Bass, author of Grounded: Finding God in the World--A Spiritual Revolution

"The winsome brilliance of Karen Wright Marsh's ability to encapsulate gorgeous little vignettes of history's greatest contemplative mystics and fierce justice advocates makes Vintage Saints and Sinners a timely work. From the most spectacular to the uttermost undramatic conversions, each hero and shero Karen introduces highlights an embodied example of vocational fidelity that is both inspiring and inviting."

--Christopher L. Heuertz, cofounder of Gravity, a Center for Contemplative Activism, author of The Sacred Enneagram

"There are few things in this world that more ably transform us than our encounters with real stories. Stories that tell of joy and shame. Of hope and anguish. Of the very hard work that leads to a world of goodness, beauty, and redemption--but not without the honest rendition of all the stumbling in the dark that necessarily accompanies such godly liberation. These are the stories that we so desperately need to hear, and they are the very stories that Karen Marsh has so thoughtfully given us with Vintage Saints and Sinners. Stories not only of the saints of clay feet who we all know about, but also the story that is her own, the one that ties all the others--the reader's not the least--into the grand narrative into which God is writing all who are willing to be included. If you want your hope to be strengthened, if you want your mind to be renewed, and if you want your story to be changed, look no further: this collection of stories is for you."

--Curt Thompson, author of The Soul of Shame

"Told with humor and vulnerability, this work introduces us afresh to twenty-five brothers and sisters who challenge us with their honest faith."

--C. Christopher Smith, Englewood Review of Books