WINONA LAKE — Morgan James Publishing’s new release, Where the Colors Blend: An Authentic Journey Through Spiritual Doubt and Despair … and a Beautiful Arrival at Hope by Stephen Copeland, speaks directly into a cultural void: inspiring a much-needed spiritual shift among those who are riddled with shame and religion, and encouraging a posture of openness, curiosity, and non-judgment in a polarized age. The book will be released on Nov.27.

In this unique book, Copeland’s self-discovery and God-discovery are told over a period of six years in the context of an annual retreat to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Roanoke, Va., where an obscure, forty-year-old church softball tournament takes place each summer to raise funds for mission work in Paraguay. Grace College athletic director Chad Briscoe, Copeland’s mentor, is one of the main characters in the book. The tournament was founded by Briscoe’s parents and is directed by Briscoe today. In stepping into these stories, and sharing them with the reader, Copeland simultaneously journeys deeper within himself, discovering the divine in the process and taking readers deep into the throes of doubt, deconstruction, and depression. But it’s there, in the darkness, that an authentic hope finds him.

”What becomes of a millennial crippled by an overdose of religion?” writes Brother Paul Quenon, a Trappist monk and author of In Praise of the Useless Life. “Copeland walks us through his disillusionment, loneliness, love, doubt, frustration, and anger with God over unexplainable evil. Thanks to seeing the vibrant faith and lives of missionaries, enthusiastically absorbed in family softball and service, he comes to a deeper awakening—to mystery, to life fully given, and joyfully lived.”

Writes New York Times bestselling author of The Shack, Wm. Paul Young: “This is an uncommonly wonderful read, written in uncommon perspective, for the common in us all; our humanity!”

Copeland’s present-tense narrative, mysteriously unfolding all the way, is free-thinking and free-flowing, swinging from humor to complex theology, from someone else’s story to sudden introspectiveness and application, creating a unique experience for readers as it challenges them to adopt their own lifestyle of introspection and contemplation.