Littlest Suffering Souls

Littlest Suffering Souls (2017)
By Austin Ruse | TAN Books
ISBN: 9781505108392
Condition: As New (yes, really)
Offered by: Crappy Old Books

This is one of those books where the title tells you exactly what you’re in for and you still aren’t quite ready.

Littlest Suffering Souls is Austin Ruse’s deeply earnest, quietly devastating collection of stories about children who suffer horribly… and somehow become luminous about it. These are kids who, by all worldly logic, should have been swallowed by pain and fear—and instead turn into walking masterclasses in faith, joy, courage and occasionally disconcerting spiritual maturity.

If your idea of a light, relaxing read is “something about heroic Catholic children who make my adult spiritual life look like a half-hearted hobby,” then step right up.

What’s going on inside?

Ruse focuses on a few particular “little souls” whose lives are:

• Short by any normal measure

• Hard, medically and emotionally

• And yet somehow full of grace, humour and surprising peace

Expect:

• Stories of kids facing serious illness or disability, and responding with:

  • startling trust in God

  • unembarrassed love for the people around them

  • and the kind of generosity that makes you feel slightly called out

• Accounts of answered prayers, conversions, and those unnerving “okay, something bigger is happening here” moments

• Reflections on what it means to suffer with Christ, not just for Him—seen through people who still liked toys and cartoons

It’s hagiography, but very recent, very real, and very likely to ambush you emotionally when you thought you were just going to read a few pages before bed.

This particular copy

• Condition: As New – which, coming from Crappy Old Books, is frankly suspicious.

  • Tight spine, pristine cover, clean pages

  • Looks almost untouched, like it’s been sitting there waiting patiently for the right reader

• No underlining, no dog-ears, no mysterious stains—no sign, in fact, that anyone has previously done the obvious thing and cried on it.

It’s the sort of copy you could wrap and give as a gift and plausibly claim you bought new. We won’t tell.

The vibe

Reading Littlest Suffering Souls is a bit like:

• Being gently dismantled by the witness of children who “get” the heart of the Gospel far more instinctively than most of us

• Finding yourself laughing at their personalities one minute and blinking back tears the next

• Feeling both:

  • consoled (“maybe God really is present in the worst bits”), and

  • mildly exposed (“what exactly am I doing with my relatively comfortable life?”)

It’s unapologetically Catholic: saints, sacraments, prayer, redemptive suffering, the whole kit. But beyond that, it’s profoundly human—about what happens when love and faith collide with situations that should break people, but don’t.

Why you might actually want this

• You’re a believer who needs real-world stories to remind you that grace is not just a nice idea but something that shows up in hospital rooms and family kitchens.

• You’re sceptical-but-curious about phrases like “offering it up” and “redemptive suffering” and want to see what that looks like outside of theology textbooks.

• You appreciate spiritual reading that doesn’t come at you with abstract theory, but with specific small people and their very real lives.

• You need something that will punch straight past your cynicism in the kindest possible way.

This is not “inspirational wallpaper.” It’s more like sitting with families who have gone through the worst and somehow come out convinced that God was not absent, but uncomfortably close.

Condition vs. Impact

• Physically: As New – a rare, immaculate specimen in the wilds of Crappy Old Books.

• Emotionally/spiritually: almost guaranteed Not As New once you’re done with it.

  • May cause: perspective shifts, sudden prayers, and a quiet resolve to complain less.

  • Side effects can include lending it to someone else with, “Just… read this. You’ll see.”

This is the sort of book that asks very little of your time, and quite a lot of your heart.

Ideal for:

• Catholics and other Christians who want their faith challenged in a tender but uncompromising way

• Readers who believe holiness isn’t just for old people with biographies already written

• Anyone who thinks “the kids are all right” and would like concrete evidence, at a very high spiritual wattage

• People who find it darkly funny that a book about modern-day little saints is arriving in As New condition from a place called Crappy Old Books

Offered by Crappy Old Books, where the branding is scruffy, the copy is immaculate, and the littlest suffering souls are ready to rearrange your idea of what a holy life looks like.

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