Beyond The Narrow Gate

The story of four women whose lives took divergent paths, yet who will always be bound by their shared heritage. It is a moving, insightful portrait of what it means to be a foreigner in America.

The author tells the intertwining stories of her mother and three classmates who, having already left China for Taiwan in the wake of the invasion of the Red Army, immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s, a time in which the Chinese were very much a minority in America.

“War messes with us; makes us do things we wouldn’t normally contemplate.” As war encroaches on the idyllic young life of Ali Conroy in the lush and undulating countryside of Northern England, she and her childhood love are swept to opposite ends of the earth – to the unrelenting and bloody battlefields of World War Two and the barren and windblown plains of North East Montana. Based on a true story from the years surrounding one of our most defining and cataclysmic conflicts, The Narrow Gate tugs at the threads that tie us to our home and our first love.

This book has been specially written to focus on the finer nuances of the way to heaven. It is based on the writings in the Bible and not on the writings available elsewhere. Both in the New Testament and the Old Testament, the thrust has been on the remission of sins and salvation. The phasing of the ceremonial laws and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ has been explained in detail so as to understand the changing relevance of the way to the straight gate. In the ultimate analysis, the great mercy of the Lord in providing us with grace to make us easier to attain our goal has also been explained. The focus has been to lend a wholesomeness in the reading and understanding of our way to heaven.

Our ability to overcome disappointment is learned in childhood. Individuals need a value-based inspiration to help them conquer defeat and advance achievement. For me, it was my mother and her stories, providing me all the knowledge, morals, humility, and courage I needed to succeed. Her stories cascading, one followed by one more. When I think of her, I see a long list of stories, bringing her back to me. Yes, every so often, I am reminded of her. I have kept her anecdotes to retell, each one amazing. Each one of her stories is a short journey allowing me to focus my attention as she attempted to prove to me that my human existence is worth it.

The precursor to the bestselling The Spiral Staircase comes Karen Armstrong’s classic memoir of her life as a young woman in a convent. Through the Narrow Gate is Karen Armstrong’s intimate memoir of life inside a Catholic convent. With honesty and clarity, she explains what drove her at age seventeen to devote herself to God. Over the next seven years, she endures the difficulties of convent life—the enforced silence, the lack of friendship and family, her own guilt at not being able to stifle her voracious intelligence—and unveils the secrets of religious life during the post–Vatican II years. Through the Narrow Gate is a moving account of a young woman’s search for God and the experiences that put Karen Armstrong on her way to becoming one of the most admired and most respected interpreters of religious faith.