Awakened by Death

Life-Giving Lessons from the Mystics

What the book really is

Awakened by Death is a reflective Christian book about mortality, but it is more accurate to say that it is a book about what fear of death does to life. That distinction matters. Peterson is not only concerned with dying as an event. She is concerned with the way mortality structures imagination, theology, parenting, grief, ritual, embodiment, social anxiety, and cultural denial. The book uses selected mystics as guides, but it does not read like a straightforward introduction to mysticism. Nor does it read like a conventional history of Christian attitudes toward death. It is a hybrid work in which memoir, cultural history, church history, literary reflection, and theological meditation are woven together into one argument: that learning to face death honestly can deepen the way we live.

Peterson explicitly signals this method early. She frames the book as her own memento mori, a deliberate attempt to look at what she fears. That framing helps the reader understand the book’s personal intensity. It is not trying to hide behind neutrality. The author’s graveyard walks, memories, family losses, and spiritual questions are not decorative side notes. They are part of the way the book thinks. Some readers will find that deeply compelling, because it makes the book feel lived and necessary. Others may prefer a more detached account. But the author is clear about the kind of book she is writing, and judged on its own terms, the approach is coherent and persuasive.

Target audience & context

The natural audience is readers of Christian spirituality, mysticism, grief reflection, contemplative writing, and thoughtful religious nonfiction. A reader does not need specialized theological training to follow the book, but it helps to be open to Christian categories, biblical reference, and historically rooted spiritual language. Peterson assumes that the reader can sit with ambiguity, pain, and imagery rather than demanding immediate utility from every page. She is writing for reflective readers, not for readers who want a productivity-minded summary of “key lessons.”

This audience fit matters because the book’s value depends heavily on expectation. Someone approaching it as a secular survey of death culture may still find interesting material, but they will not be its ideal reader. Likewise, someone searching for a practical hospice guide, a handbook for funeral planning, or a formal academic monograph will probably feel the mismatch. Peterson’s book belongs in a space between devotional reflection and intellectually serious essay-writing. It wants to help readers think more deeply and feel more truthfully, not primarily to manage systems or solve logistical problems.

Writing style & readability

The prose is one of the book’s strongest assets. Peterson writes in an essayistic, literary style that often begins with a vivid sensory scene and then opens into broader analysis. A cemetery bench, an old graveyard in Scotland, a child’s remark about being buried, a loved one’s death, a grandfather in a funeral home, life on a farm, childhood fear of horror, or a family conversation about mourning can become entry points into large questions about death and its meaning. This keeps the book emotionally accessible even when the subject matter becomes historically dense or theologically charged. The style is inviting without becoming simplistic.

At the same time, the style asks for patience. The book is not built from tightly compressed thesis statements followed by evidence blocks. It unfolds associatively and meditatively. That means readability is high for the right kind of reader, but momentum can feel slower for those who prefer a more linear, thesis-driven structure. In practical terms, this is a book to read in thoughtful stretches, not one to skim quickly for “the main point.” Peterson often wants the reader to dwell in atmosphere, image, and spiritual tension before reaching a conclusion. That is a strength aesthetically, though it may feel diffuse to some readers.

Structure & learning logic

The structure is one of the reasons the book succeeds. The contents page shows a clear five-part progression: medieval mystics, early modern mystics, a Victorian section centered on George MacDonald, an American section focused on funeral practice, racism, childbirth, and climate change, and a concluding part on loneliness, grief, good death, and the spiritual practice of dying. This architecture gives the book both range and direction. It does not simply accumulate examples. It moves from historical and symbolic frameworks toward more immediate moral and practical questions.

That progression creates a strong learning logic. In the medieval section, Peterson establishes a world in which death is visible, bodily, public, and unavoidable. Images like the Danse Macabre and cadaver tombs show how older cultures confronted mortality in ways modern readers often find grotesque. The early modern section then shows a shift in psychological and theological emphasis, especially around predestination, fear, shame, and the hiddenness of death. The Victorian section changes register by using George MacDonald and fairy literature to explore imagination, childhood, and mystery. The American section brings the inquiry into social history and public ethics. Finally, the last part turns toward how people grieve, what a good death might mean, and how dying can become a spiritual practice rather than a final interruption. That is a carefully shaped arc, and it is one of the book’s quiet achievements.

Visual style of the book

The book is visually restrained. It is not an illustrated trade book, nor is it full of charts, sidebars, diagrams, or pedagogical callouts. What it does have is a strong formal presentation. The cover is symbolically effective, presenting a dissolving human-like figure above the title, which immediately communicates mortality, fragility, and transformation. The contents pages clearly display the five-part design, giving the reader a strong sense of shape before the argument begins. The timeline at the end is especially useful because it lets readers see the mystics and historical periods at a glance, reinforcing that the book’s historical range is curated and intentional rather than random.

Because the interior is mainly text-forward, the “visual teaching style” of the book is really a matter of layout discipline and structural clarity rather than image-rich instruction. That will suit readers who prefer serious nonfiction without graphic clutter. It may disappoint readers who expect illustrated religious history or design-heavy popular nonfiction. But within its own understated format, the book looks intelligent, orderly, and coherent.

Strengths

The first major strength is synthesis. Peterson brings together subjects that could easily feel fragmented: plague culture, skull imagery, bodily disgust, mystical union, martyrdom, Victorian childhood, fantasy literature, slavery, funeral practice, ecology, communal mourning, and hospice-like care. Yet the book rarely feels arbitrary. The connective tissue is her persistent focus on what fear of death does to people and societies. Because she returns to that question again and again, even the unusual turns usually feel purposeful rather than merely idiosyncratic.

The second strength is emotional honesty. Peterson writes openly about fear, grief, disappointment, and complicated family feeling. Her discussion of her grandmother’s death, her father’s lonely death, and the gap between the death she hoped for and the death that occurred gives the book depth and credibility. It prevents the subject from becoming merely decorative or intellectual. The book feels written by someone who genuinely needs the questions she is asking.

The third strength is moral seriousness. The book refuses to reduce death to a private spiritual problem. In the American section, Peterson shows how mortality intersects with race, slavery, medical disparity, and ecological harm. The chapter material on Sojourner Truth gives the book one of its strongest historical and ethical dimensions, while the chapter on ecology argues that estrangement from death can feed estrangement from the created world. These moves make the book broader and more contemporary than a narrowly devotional work would have been.

The fourth strength is the ending. Many books on serious themes lose force at the end by becoming vague or abruptly practical. Peterson instead narrows her focus into grief, good death, and the spiritual practice of dying. Those final chapters do not turn into a manual, but they do help the book arrive somewhere lived. The reader comes away not only with historical images and theological ideas, but with a clearer sense that mortality requires communal practice, emotional truthfulness, and spiritual preparation.

Weaknesses

The most obvious limitation is audience narrowness. This is not simply a “spiritual” book in a broad market sense. It is explicitly Christian, and Christian in a fairly serious way. The book assumes that figures like Teresa of Ávila, Francis de Sales, George MacDonald, Sojourner Truth, and Howard Thurman can operate as meaningful guides within a religious imagination shaped by Scripture, incarnation, suffering, and union with God. Readers who do not share that frame may still appreciate the writing, but they will not receive the book in the way it most clearly intends.

A second weakness is selectivity. Peterson admits that she is giving a sketch rather than a total history, and that honesty helps. Still, the consequence is that some readers may wish for more continuity, more historical scaffolding, or more explanation for why certain figures or transitions receive the attention they do. The book is rich in suggestive interpretation, but it is not always equally systematic. In some chapters, resonance matters more than argument. For many readers that will be a pleasure; for others it will feel structurally lighter than ideal.

A third weakness is practical specificity. The book certainly has practical implications, especially in the later chapters on grief and good death, and Peterson offers meaningful reflections on communal mourning, home funerals, and the problems of modern funeral culture. But even there, the reader gets vision more than procedure. Someone seeking detailed applied guidance on end-of-life planning, grief rituals, hospice decision-making, or funeral alternatives will not get enough operational detail here.

Strange / unusual points

One unusual feature is the book’s willingness to take seemingly strange material with complete seriousness. Cadaver tombs, decomposing bodies in medieval art, skull symbolism, incorruptible saints, and martyr imagery are not treated as curiosities. Peterson uses them to reveal how older Christians related to death more directly than many modern readers do. That gives the book a memorable, sometimes unsettling visual imagination that sets it apart from more sanitized spiritual writing.

A second unusual feature is the George MacDonald section. It is not obvious that Victorian fairy tales and childhood imagination should sit at the center of a book about death, but Peterson makes it work. She uses MacDonald to argue that imagination can prepare us for mystery in ways rational control cannot. That gives the book a needed tonal variation and keeps it from becoming only grim or bodily. It also helps explain why the book is ultimately about living, not merely about dying.

A third unusual point is the ecological argument. Peterson links care for the earth with a more truthful relationship to mortality. That is not a standard move in Christian books about death, yet it fits her larger claim that denial of creatureliness distorts both spiritual life and social life. Even readers who find this extension less convincing than other parts of the book will likely remember it, which is itself a sign of the book’s originality.

What the reader actually gains

The book does not primarily give the reader a method; it gives the reader language, images, and orientation. After reading it, one is better able to name what is missing in modern death culture: embodied mourning, communal lament, deeper ritual, honest fear, and more mature forms of hope. The reader also gains a set of historical and spiritual companions who remain vivid after the book ends. Medieval artists, Teresa of Ávila, Francis de Sales, George MacDonald, Sojourner Truth, Howard Thurman, and Peterson’s own family stories all become part of a shared reflection on mortality.

Just as important, the book helps readers see that grief is not only private emotion. It is connected to ritual, body, place, memory, community, theology, and even politics. Peterson’s writing can therefore be genuinely useful to readers who are not in immediate bereavement but who suspect that their culture has trained them to avoid necessary sorrow. In that sense, the book helps create readiness. Not mastery over death, but less illusion about what it means to be mortal.

My judgment

This is a strong and distinctive book. It is not the broadest treatment of death, not the most academic, and not the most practical. But it is more memorable than many books that are fuller in one of those narrower senses. Peterson writes with intelligence, moral seriousness, and emotional credibility, and she is unusually good at showing how fear of death leaks into all kinds of areas that modern readers do not usually connect to mortality. For reflective readers, especially Christian readers, it is a valuable and often moving book. For readers outside that frame, it may still be interesting, but it will probably remain more admirable than transformative. Either way, it is a serious piece of work, and it lingers after finishing.

Command Palette