More Than Conquerors: A Memoir of Lost Arguments

Megan Hustad and her family try to reconcile an evangelical upbringing in a post-Christian America

When Megan Hustad and her sister were children, their parents decided to quit their jobs and become evangelical missionaries. Nine years later, after stints on the Caribbean island of Bonaire and the outskirts of Amsterdam, they returned to the Midwest, where cracks in the family mythologies started to show. If the four of them could not agree on God’s love, there was no agreeing on the moral of their story. One version portrayed them as well-meaning naïfs. In the other they were suckers.
In this searing, candid account of culture wars fought within a loving but conflicted family, Hustad explores what happens once a person decides that jettisoning religious faith will deliver the life she desires--and then realizes it’s more complicated. More Than Conquerors tackles class, politics, the slipperiness of memory, the promises of a particular brand of American faith, the seductions of cities, and the chasing of grace in all its guises. It is the story of a family that feels at home anywhere and nowhere, sufficiently unusual to be perfectly ordinary, doubtful enough to be true believers.

Megan Hustad is the author of How to Be Useful. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the New York Post, Slate, The Awl, Fortune, and a few other places. She lives and works in New York City.