Tale of life affected by pastoral abuse offers dose of hope with political critique
Book review: ‘Ghosted: An American Story’ by Nancy French, ★★★★★
I began reading Nancy French’s memoir, Ghosted: An American Story, knowing almost nothing about her life story. I knew mainly that she is the wife of David French, the prolific New York Times columnist known best as a conservative evangelical1 who was one of the earliest Republican critics of Donald Trump, one of the few prominent Republicans who has remained a critic. And I knew that the book’s title came from her being known in her own right as a bestselling ghostwriter who became alienated from U.S. conservatism as it increasingly was shaped by Trump’s vitriol. I also knew that she had done journalistic work about systemic sexual abuse of children at a Christian summer camp.
I hesitate to say much more about Ms. French’s life story, for part of the joy of reading her book was experiencing surprise after surprise. Her life unfolded almost never as one might have predicted from what transpired before. Parts of her story were, frankly, unbelievable, although I have no doubt they happened as she explained.
If you want to have a similar experience to mine, just stop reading now and buy the book. Whether your religion or politics tilts left or right, you won’t be disappointed. Then come back in a day or two — the book is hard to put down — and resume reading this review.
On to the review ...
Since you’ve continued reading, I’m going to try to tell as little of the story as I can while still conveying not only why the book is such a captivating read but also why it is one of the most important books in recent years published by the evangelical powerhouse Zondervan.
A few years ago, the #metoo movement, in which women adopted the hashtag as way of showing how widespread sexual abuse and harassment was, became a social media phenomenon and was covered extensively by conventional news media. Many if not most of the well-publicized cases of women who announced they had been victims of sexual abuse or harassment were women known to be political or social liberals and/or women of high social status, and they gained widespread support for coming out with their painful stories. (Many of them also were ridiculed and called liars.)
When French went public with her story of being sexually abused as a pubescent girl by a youth pastor, she didn’t get that kind of public support; as a political conservative and a person who grew up in fundamentalist home in the Appalachian foothills, she didn’t fit the mold of the women getting most the praise for their vulnerability. She was mocked online as a “seducer of pastors,” and Twitter (now X) hosted numerous posts by trolls falsely claiming they had had sex with her. At one point, French writes, “I cheered for (and feared for) the women brave enough to speak out, but I had no more fight.”
Her article about being abused, plus her status as an evangelical critical of Trump, damaged her writing career. Although she was a bestselling writer as the co-author of Bristol Palin’s autobiography, her conscience forced her to distance herself from writing that endorsed Trumpism, and politically conservative clients increasingly separated themselves from her.
Much of the book focuses, perhaps inadvertently, on the long-term damage that the pastor’s repeated abuse of her caused, as it took a long time for French to comprehend the trauma that he had inflicted on her. For decades afterward, she viewed the abuse as a failed relationship rather than a serial assault. Her self-funded journalistic investigation of sexual abuse at the Kanakuk youth camp seems to have been part of her self-prescribed therapy, as were steps she took near the end of the book to face head-on the abuse (not just from the youth pastor) that she had been subject to in her adolescence and early adulthood.
Not all of French’s life tale is so grim: far from it, in fact. It is also one of miraculous love, courage and personal growth that would have been unforeseeable for a girl growing up in poverty and abuse. Hers is a story of faith, one that is conveyed not by preaching but by facing challenges and learning to receive support from unexpected places. French’s memoir works not only as an inspirational book, but also as a journalistic thriller, a sharp critique of the sickness within American evangelicalism, and a romance.
In the end, Ghosted is a book of hope. It will easily end up as one of my favorite books of 2024.
Her story continues ...
As fans of the author or her husband may already know, French is undergoing treatment for cancer. The book ends before her diagnosis; she has been updating her readers on the social medium Threads in a way that shows the courage and vulnerability she also shows throughout her book.
As “evangelical” has become as much a political identity as a theological approach on Christianity, I’m not sure I’d continue to apply that label to either of the Frenches today. Theologically, they appear to remain in the traditional evangelical camp, maybe something like what could be found in the more inclusive wing of evangelicalism around the turn of the millennium. But they are far removed from the wing of evangelicalism that has turned into demagogic nationalism.