Wonder Is a Lovely Place to Be

Wonder Is a Lovely Place to Be gathers 365 essays, poems, and sketches from Brian Doyle, revealing his keen eye for grace and an imagination shaped by his Catholic faith. Drawing from both beloved and previously unpublished works, this collection invites readers to notice holiness woven through ordinary, everyday moments.

With a keen eye for detail—the slap of flip-flops on pavement, a kindergartener released to the playground with arms flung open and untied shoes, a no-look pass in a neighborhood pickup basketball game—Doyle shapes small moments into stories and aims them straight at the human heart. His writing is a summons to live with wide eyes and open hearts in a fragile world: “Do not tire, do not despair, . . . be relentless, be merry, . . . be alert, be attentive—for there is holiness all around us like an ocean.” In Doyle’s vision, holiness lives in pain as much as it does in joy, and “no moment is mundane, every moment is a miracle, every moment is a meal.”

Doyle wrote everywhere—on envelopes, inside book jackets, on the backs of menus—driven by the conviction that we are “here so briefly” and called, each day, to “see clear” and “bring [our] best selves to bear.” Some of these fragments became essays published around the world; many others remained scattered across his desk like driftwood from a life immersed in language. Now his wife, Mary Miller Doyle, gathers his writing—including never-before-seen stories, poems, sketches, and even cartoons—into a daily collection that invites readers into his sacred imagination on all year long.

A born story catcher, Brian Doyle was a master of the brief essay, the tight poem, and the achingly beautiful anecdote. Though the magazine editor, novelist, and author of One Long River of Song and A Book of Uncommon Prayer died of brain cancer at sixty, readers continue to return to his work for the way it reveals the joyful, wild mystery of holiness humming through all things.