Some books entertain. Others inform. And then there are rare books that don’t just tell a story; they excavate a soul. Finding Katie by Alix Wiebe is one of those books. It doesn’t ask for your attention. It asks for your honesty. It reaches into the quiet, broken places you’ve learned to ignore and says, “You too?”
This isn’t just the memoir of a woman named Katie. It’s the deeply personal and painfully universal story of what happens when a girl is raised to be everything everyone else wants; except herself.
Katie’s early life looks ideal on the outside. Raised in a respected Christian household, the daughter of medical missionaries, her world is structured, clean, and full of purpose. She’s bright, obedient, spiritually inclined. She even thrives in a tight-knit church community in Puerto Rico where neighbors are friends and religion feels like rhythm.
But beneath the surface, small cracks begin to form. A childhood violation, quietly buried and never named, begins to warp her sense of safety and self-worth. Adolescent anxiety takes root, disguised as religious intensity. Katie trades joy for perfectionism, curiosity for compliance. She stops being a person and starts becoming a performance.
Wiebe’s greatest strength as a writer is her refusal to sugarcoat. She tells Katie’s story not through the lens of hindsight and healing, but with all the rawness and confusion it held in real time. We watch as Katie struggles with body shame, spiritual fear, and emotional suppression. We follow her into a marriage where submission is demanded, love is conditional, and her sense of identity is all but erased. She’s drowning; quietly, invisibly; all while still singing hymns and serving others.
And this is the brilliance of Finding Katie. It doesn’t scream. It simmers. Katie doesn’t fall apart in some dramatic collapse. She disappears slowly, in silence. Like so many women, she stops asking what she wants or who she is. She focuses instead on being good, acceptable, godly, and enough. But “enough” never comes. Only exhaustion.
The journey of the book is not just one of escape; it’s one of awakening. Katie’s healing doesn’t happen all at once. There’s no magic moment. Instead, Wiebe paints a slow, halting, deeply human process of re-becoming. It starts with questions. Quiet ones. Then tears. Then rebellion; not the dramatic, burn-it-all-down kind, but the quiet rebellion of no longer apologizing for existing.
Katie learns that healing doesn’t always come in one grand act of courage. Sometimes, it looks like finally saying no. Or buying jeans instead of another skirt that fits someone else’s standards. Or daring to rest without guilt. Or going to therapy and telling the truth. These aren’t flashy moments, but they are revolutionary.
One of the most powerful threads throughout the memoir is Katie’s evolving view of God. The version of God she grew up with was watching, judging, keeping score. As she heals, that God crumbles. In His place, she discovers the real one; not a tyrant but a Father, not a prosecutor but a protector. The God who weeps with her. Waits for her. And, most importantly, never once left her.
Wiebe’s prose is gentle but piercing. She knows how to sit with pain without rushing to fix it. She invites the reader to do the same; to look back at our own buried selves, to ask the hard questions, and to believe that maybe, just maybe, we are not too far gone to be found.
What makes Finding Katie so impactful isn’t just its honesty; it’s the quiet assurance that healing is possible. Katie doesn’t return to who she was before everything went wrong. She becomes someone entirely new; someone stronger, freer, softer, truer.
This memoir speaks directly to women raised in faith traditions that taught them to shrink. To those taught that being spiritual meant being silent. That sacrifice was holiness, that boundaries were rebellion, that suffering was sanctified. Katie’s story doesn’t reject faith; it reclaims it. She shows us that you don’t have to lose your soul to save it. That faith without fear, love without performance, and grace without guilt are not only possible; they are essential.
Finding Katie is for the woman who smiles at church but cries in the car. For the woman who loves God but doesn’t know if He loves her back. For the woman who’s tired of trying so hard to be okay. It’s not just a book; it’s an invitation to come home to yourself.
By the final pages, something in you will have shifted. Not in a loud, explosive way, but in the way a locked door opens after years of being stuck. You’ll exhale. You’ll remember a part of yourself you’d forgotten. And you’ll want to find her again.
Because maybe you were never really lost.
Maybe you were just buried.
