My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is very well written and is very much more than ‘he did this’, he ‘said that’. The author has had access to Peterson’s journals and private papers, as well as to the man himself – although I am not clear about how long he knew him well. If someone only knows Peterson through ‘The Message’, this will be a revelation.

However this book is disappointing in one sense. It reveals that Peterson was never really happy as an academic or as a pastor. Now some of that would be familiar to those who have read some of his books (e.g. Under the Unpredictable Plant). However while Peterson no doubt wrote about a ministerial ideal, it is hard to read this book now without thinking that at some level he crafted a fantasy. His children kept a tally of the evenings he was not there. He wrote about how he had no support from his denominational leaders (and he fabricated scandalous fictional reports). He faced a rebellion even when he went away for a short break during a sabbatical. He persuaded his congregation to relieve him of administrative duties, but that still left him unfulfilled. Again and again he felt misunderstood, in the wrong job, wanting to leave… He simply chafed at what ministerial life is bound to be. Even when he was a professor at Regent College he felt out of place.

As Collier tells the story, Peterson only really was at east at Flathead Lake, Montana in the home that his father built, with family nearby – with ample to time to read, pray and write. But even then the retreat into himself caused tensions with his patient wife, Jan. The author writes with considerable sympathy about Peterson’s last year, as dementia was biting, when an unguarded word in an interview about gay marriage (and then a retraction) caused such an uproar, and like it or not tarnished his reputation.

A book worth reading to gain a more rounded understanding of a much loved author.



View all my reviews