10. Here If You Need Me

Here If You Need Me: A True Story
By Kate Braestrup
Publisher: Scribner
224 pages
$23.99

When Braestrup's husband, Drew, a Maine state trooper, was killed in a traffic accident, leaving her alone with four small children, she did what any uncommonly brave, quirkily devout person would do: She became a Unitarian minister and a chaplain in the Maine Warden Service, the people responsible for rescuing (or recovering the bodies of) wayward hikers, drunken snowmobilers, straying children and other victims of Maine's pitiless northern terrain. She tells her story, and the stories of those she has helped and worked with and grieved with, with simplicity and intelligence and grace.