This one hit really close to home. Lenz combines reporting from churches throughout the Midwest with deeply personal stories about her faith, the evolution of her politics, dissolution of her marriage, and a failed church plant. Her stories show the good (community! potlucks! lovely traditions! mutual care in rural areas!), but don't shy away from the messy. It's a deep, nuanced, complicated--even diverse--look at the Midwest. She lives in Iowa and spends time getting to know communities and congregations; this isn't an NYTimes reporter dropping in to photograph some chipping paint on a barn and chat up a guy in a MAGA hat at a diner.

Lenz captured a feeling that I've had a hard time putting my finger on from my time as a woman who spent a lot of time in white evangelical spaces: that feeling of needing to make yourself smaller to fit in, of being blamed for being the one to make things uncomfortable, the weight of those countless tiny decisions of when to speak up or not. After years of struggling with patriarchal views in churches and other faith-based organizations, she also doesn't absolve herself from being slow to see the white supremacy in these spaces.

"The truth is more likely that we live in a place that does both. A place where we dine at the houses of our neighbors, but post cruelties about them on Facebook. Where we will give the shirt off our back for someone in need, but vote against them at the ballot box... the dissonance is as deep and real and painful as any part of American history. And it's tempting to look away from it to instead focus on the positive. Look at all the good that is done. But the violence is still part of the story of faith and religion."