Loving Samuel is a retelling of the experience of welcoming and loving my son Samuel, who was diagnosed in utero with a chromosomal abnormality known as Trisomy 18. Samuel died January 2, 2012, just five hours after his birth. The experience of loving him and grieving his loss has profoundly shaped the character of my family. Loving Samuel weaves together both the narrative of our experience and broad thematic reflections on the human condition, the difficulties of loss and grief, the importance of friendship, and the necessity of virtues like faith and love for suffering well--for wresting something good from circumstances that seem meaningless.

"This is such a beautiful book, suffused with suffering and pain, and yet shot through and through with the love of a mom and dad for their little boy--a love that not even death could sever. This book is not mushy, but it is tender, and deep, and real. Reading it blessed me, and it will bless you too."
--Timothy George, editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture

"Wordsworth wrote of 'emotion recollected in tranquility,' and that is what Aaron Cobb gives us in this beautiful recollection of Samuel, the son with trisomy 18, given to Aaron and his wife Alisha to hold for four hours and fifty-eight minutes, but to love for a lifetime. Probing deeply the experience of love and loss, of sorrow and gratitude, this is a work for us, its readers, to learn from in grateful silence."
--Gilbert Meilaender, Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University

"'A gift more precious and sweet than it was bitter.'. . . As readers, we are invited to walk through the precious, the sweet, and the bitter moments of love and loss and learning. Like Henri Nouwen before him, Cobb's measured prose, his honest and careful thinking, and his theological and emotional reflections combine to make this a book worth reading more than once."
--Amy Julia Becker, author of A Good and Perfect Gift

"Loving Samuel confronts the deepest theological questions of the human condition, both by exposing the false certainties of traditional systems and by pressing fully into how despair, desolation, and death can give new meaning to otherwise conventional notions of faith, hope, and love. Classical orthodoxy here gives way to a powerful theological orthopathy, one that enables new witness to arise from out of the crucible of life. Get this book--it may eventually save your faith, if not your life."
--Amos Yong, Professor of Theology & Mission & Director of Center for Missiological Research, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA

Aaron D. Cobb is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University at Montgomery. His primary area of teaching is Medical Ethics and his research focuses primarily on the History of the Philosophy of Science.