Abstract:
In 2008, William Powers published Shaping a Life: Reconstructing my First Thirty-Five Years. That book recounted his early life, including the ten years that he served as a Catholic priest in Brooklyn, New York. Middle Life continues the story, unwrapping features of the life of a man who had made an abrupt change of direction. That “middle” life included marriage, family, and a new career. Readers will be able to identify with the joys, setbacks, and challenges of the author. Much of his naiveté and many of the tensions and missteps related might be attributed to his earlier clerical life. On the other hand, he derives strength and direction from the faith and discipline which that life had fostered and which has continued to have an impact on his life.