To begin, I have to say this is a pretty wild book to give someone in today’s world.
Disclaimer: I seem to have a bias against biographies and autobiographies and this is how I personally experienced the book.
I can see how No Place to Cry might have helped people in the past as they worked through personal struggles. Maybe some readers even return to it for the comfort they once found in its pages. But reading it now, I found it unsettling.
The book carries a tone that sometimes feels homophobic (though I understand it comes from a different era), and its filled with testimonies of traumatic events. These are usually followed by the author urging the reader to simply trust her God, often with the reasoning that these painful events are part of “a bigger plan.”
That leaves me wondering, who is this book really for? Even for readers who share the same faith, it seems like it would be more helpful to explain why they should trust this God, rather than just insisting that they should.
Conclusion: Risky gift but it's safer to gift it to an older Christian woman.