Paul Powers has had the type of life of which television movies are made. Minutes after he watched his mother die, the seven-year-old was beaten by his alcoholic father for crying over her death. Shortly thereafter, the father set up housekeeping with the town hooker, who plied her trade in the family home. To term the Powers household dysfunctional is to employ understatement.

LaVern Powers (as he was then known) went on to a life of petty crime. One robbery went horribly wrong and the young teen shot a woman to death. Thus began repeated visits to reform schools and juvenile institutions. Upon parole, the 16-year-old was given a job by the Bata shoe company and provided with room and board by an elderly religious couple. Powers was hostile to organized religion, but did little to antagonize his hosts.

A few years later, Powers had a spiritual conversion, adopted the name of another skeptic-turned-preacher, and began a career as an evangelical minister. His wife Margaret Fishback Powers (who provides the foreword to this book) works with him and wrote the familiar poem Footprints, based on an incident during their courtship.

He recites all of this in a straightforward autobiography. He omits none of his sordid background, save for some choice language not in keeping with his current profession. He does not proselytize. Although he has worked with the Focus on the Family group, whose founder James Dobson was recently dubbed “The Godzilla of the Right” by the New York Times, Powers does not spout the ultraconservative line espoused by so many fundamentalist Christians.

Too Tough To Cry is a book that will find favour with religious believers and those seeking spiritual awakening. It deserves to be read by a wider audience.