A young woman exposes the depths of honest grief, and the harrowing struggle toward a more authentic faith, after the devastating loss of her father.

At only twenty-two, Emily Katherine Dalton lost her father—her beloved anchor—to a sudden heart attack. Just a moment ago there had been happiness as she held his hand while the family sang “Happy Birthday” to him—and now, she had lost every sense of home she’d ever known and the secure faith she’d formed felt shattered.

In this memoir, she shares her honest, gritty journey of fighting to hold on to her belief after her world turned upside down—fighting to name the depths of new emotions and questions she had never before held; wrestling to somehow let the people around her into the chaos, and cope with the pressure to be “positive;” and relentlessly trying to run toward a God she had to learn to relate to all over again after facing the greatest trauma she had ever known.

Let’s Be Real offers insight into processing emotional trauma and what authentic friendship really looks like as Emily Katherine relates and reframes stories that taught her the greatest lessons about the faith that follows trauma, grief, and loss—a faith that has to be real.