Circling Faith is a collection of essays by southern women that encompasses spirituality and the experience of winding through the religiously charged environment of the American South.

I only stumbled on this book by visiting Bethanne Hill's booth at the Kentuck Arts Festival (she did the cover art), and I finally got around to reading it about a year later (after seeing it at Kentuck again).

As with any collection, I had a range of reactions and would probably do better to give each essay its own rating. But for the sake of brevity, I'll just mention my favorites.

Mary Karr's "Facing Altars" reluctantly confesses her journey into prayer via poetry. This was the first and best essay in the book. Karr's voice teeters on the erudite edge of our Southern vernacular: she's speaking my language, and she's talking about my life.

Beth Ann Fennelly wrote about trying to get into geophagy - dirt eating - as a metaphor for taking the leap into religion. "Can I make an intellectual decision to grow faith, or to crave dirt?" she muses. It's a strange comparison, but I enjoyed the read and the thoughts.

In "Going to Church," singer/songwriter Marshall Chapman describes her unintentional cycle out of and back into church. I appreciated the honesty and humor in her account, as well as the fact that her sign from God that she was in the right pew was the hat on the head of the person in front of her, turned backwards so she could read its message: "F*** OFF OR DIE!"

And dealing with a topic that I don't think comes up nearly enough in church, Episcopalian priest Barbara Brown Taylor writes about her experience of her own physical body throughout her journey of faith. I was thrilled to hear echoes of Anne Lamott here.

My final favorite was "Signs of Faith," by the late Barbara Robinette Moss. Where is God, if anywhere, when you're dying? Moss takes on the question with grit, transparency, and humility.

I was surprised to find that the essays on faith tended to be more thoughtful and cohesive than the ones about losing or rejecting faith. The no-faith writing seemed a little defensive and self-conscious...and not really very Southern. Is this because faith (encompassing both religion and superstition) is a part of the air we breathe in the American South? Or maybe I just wasn't ready for the way these no-faith essays broke from the almost gothic tone of the rest, the Flannery O'Connor-esque voice that, to me, seems quintessentially Southern.

Anyway. The book was pretty well curated, and it introduced me to a few authors from whom I'd like to read more. ( )