Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience

A tour de force, voice-driven debut that examines how one woman finally found the middle ground between Heaven and Hell--an NPR Best Book of the Year.

As a young girl, Maggie Rowe took the idea of salvation very seriously. Growing up in a moderately religious household, her fear of eternal damnation turned into a childhood terror that drove her to become an outrageously dedicated Born-again Christian —regularly slinging Bible verses in cutthroat scripture memorization competitions and assaulting strangers at shopping malls with the “good news” that they were going to hell.

Finally, at nineteen, crippled by her fear, she checked herself in to an Evangelical psychiatric facility. And that is where her journey really began. Surrounded by a ragtag cast of characters, including a former biker meth-head struggling with anger management issues, a set of identical twins tormented by erotic fantasies, a World War II veteran and artist of denial who insists that he’s only “locked up for a tune-up,” and a warm and upbeat chronic depressive who becomes the author’s closest ally, Maggie launches a campaign to, in the words of Martin Luther, "Sin bravely in order to know the forgiveness of God."

For the last fifteen years, Maggie Rowe has performed in and produced the Comedy Central stage show sitnspin, Los Angeles’ longest running spoken word, having taken over the reigns from creator Jill Soloway in 2002. She has written for Arrested Development and Flaked for Netflix. She co-wrote the screenplay for and directed the New Age religious mockumentary “Bright Day” and is the creator of the theatrical satires Hollywood Hellhouse and Hollywood Purity Ball. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Jim Vallely.