Book Review: Here if You Need Me by Kate Braestrup

As a mother of four and wife to Maine State trooper Drew Griffith, Kate Braestrup thought her life was in order as a wife, mother, and writer. Drew’s plans though were to go to school to become a Unitarian minister. Suddenly though, Kate becomes a widow and then decides to pursue Drew’s dream. She becomes a Unitarian minister and begins working with the Maine Game Warden department, mainly ministering to the families of those involved in search and rescue attempts – the hikers, the lost snowmobilers, the swimmers falling over a waterfall, the despondent young women, the lost children.

However this book isn’t, as I had first thought, simply full of anecdotes of Kate’s involvement with search and rescue attempts. Oh no, it is much, much more than that. There, are plenty of interesting anecdotes that’s for sure but it is a story of Kate’s life as a single mother, as a spiritual woman, as a spiritual leader, and as a caring human being. It is a book full of the essays of a talented writer giving her take on life, death, and heaven, all in a gentle way where it is easy to imagine the skill in which she is able to minister to those in need. She does so without judging anyone be they a fundamentalist, atheist, agnostic, or of any other belief.

There is the story of a young suicide victim whose brother she counsels and consoles as he is worried she will be unable to have a Christian burial because of the way she died, there is the story of the parents Kate spends the night consoling with after their daughter goes missing, answering the atheist mother who says, “It’s so cool that the warden service has a chaplain to keep us from freaking out,” by responding,”I’m not really here to keep you from freaking out. I’m here to be with you while you freak out.”

And here is the story of Kate, the mother, helping her four children get over the death of their beloved father, all the while in deep mourning herself. Kate who loved her husband so deeply. So very deeply that she does for her husband what few new widows will ever do in this modern age.

All I can say is WOW. I don’t know when I have been so moved by a book.

The reader will be moved to tears, laugh out loud, begin a spiritual awakening – and keep the book nearby for re-reading of Kate’s essays again and again. You will wish she was your friend, your pastor. You will wish you had the honor of having her wisdom nearby on a daily basis. But since you don’t reading this book will have to suffice. The world would be a better place if there were more Kate Braestrups in it. God bless you Kate and thank you for sharing a part of your world and your wisdom in this magnificent read.