Abstract
Swenson hopes her book will induce in readers a feeling of "stepping into a steaming hot tub full of interesting people, easing aches and promising thought-provoking and engaging conversation" (p. 2). She writes that her book is not a treatise on how the Bible or medicine may cure pain. It is also not an apologetic or theodicy on the why of pain. It is about unwelcome pain and the efforts to mitigate or manage it (p. 3). It deals with both physical and psychological pain, because, for many people, the emotional pain accompanying physical pain can exceed it.