



They Will Tell You the World Is Yours
On Little Rebellions and Finding Your Way
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected May 20, 2025
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
“There are wonder and wisdom in these pages.”—Joanna Gaines
Where do we find true fulfillment? How did we get lost along the way? These lushly written, emotionally resonant stories light candles along the path as we each search for purpose.
They will tell you that a better version of yourself is waiting to be found.
Every day, we hear a version of this message, and so we search and strive. Yet none of the places we’ve been told to look—our careers, relationships, even dreams that come true—seem to give lasting satisfaction. After twenty years as a professional writer of other people’s truth, Anna Mitchael found herself at the same crossroads. Tired of reaching and wondering where it was all headed, she began asking questions.
They will tell you to cut the blooms off your roses so that the flowers can grow back bigger and better.
This book is an invitation that grew from those inquiries. A series of vignettes, as incisive as they are lyrical, paints a portrait of a woman growing from childhood into early adulthood, navigating family, friendships, identity, career ambitions, and love. While this woman moves through a time of crisis that ultimately turns into an awakening, we see her explore, fall down, and get back up. As she learns to sift the messages she is told, we, too, are encouraged to seek truth beyond what the world has prescribed for our happiness.
Even with our wild differences, I still believe in something greater we share: a spirit of divine love at our core that, no matter how far away we get, will always be calling us home.
For hearts in search of answers, this collection poses questions to help find lasting truth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In these lyrical vignettes, essayist and Wacoan magazine columnist Mitchael (Copygirl) mines her life experiences to share with readers "the truth as thoroughly as I know it." The brief, second-person pieces—many of which begin by questioning a piece of received wisdom—find Mitchael writing from the perspectives of her younger selves, including a child contemplating how she fits into the world ("You already feel pretty different from kids at school.... Your people are out there") and a young woman standing up for herself by demanding a raise. Elsewhere, she reflects on her search as an adult for a different kind of spirituality than the "spoon-fed" religious didacticism of her childhood, even as she acknowledges that "choosing to believe" means she can no longer maintain an illusion of control over her life. (A section toward the end of the book nicely underscores this point as Mitchael considers the limits of driving one's own destiny—"Whose fingers are at the keys? You will not know. Where is the train going? A mystery.") The author's insights are perceptive—"advice, it will seem more and more, is people telling you how they wish they had been courageous enough to live"—even if the second-person narration wears out its welcome as a rhetorical device. Seekers will find pearls of wisdom.