"The Great Blue Hills of God is the powerful, resilient memoir by the creative force behind legendary, award-winning farm-to-table resort, Blackberry Farm, in Tennessee. Born with "the gift of hospitality," Kreis Beall helped create one of the South's most enchanting destinations, Blackberry Farm, in Tennessee's Smoky Mountain foothills. For decades, she was a fixture in the entertaining and design world and on the glossy pages of popular shelter magazines. But beautiful exteriors and glowing accolades papered-over deep inner pain. At the pinnacle of her success, a brain injury left her with devastating hearing loss; that was followed by the collapse of her 36 year marriage to her "best friend and business partner," Sandy Beall, and a few years later, the tragic death of her grown son and proprietor of Blackberry Farm, Sam, at age 39. Alone and desolate as her marriage ends, Kreis begins a new journey, to find her faith and find God. After spending years on her exterior life and work, now she must begin the hardest undertaking of all: to reclaim her interior life and soul. Kreis retreats to Blackberry Farm, moving into a dimly lit 300 square foot shed with peeling paint walls, "where I met myself for the first time." Out of brokenness has come reflection, re-examination, and bit-by-bit, healing and meaning. By turns fiercely honest, heartbreaking, warm, and funny, Kreis Beall's story will resonate with anyone who has ever searched to find genuine beauty among their own flaws and scars"--
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The creative force behind Blackberry Farm, Tennessee’s award-winning farm-to-table resort, reveals how she found herself only after losing everything in this powerful memoir of resilience. “I couldn’t put down this wise, honest, beautifully written story.”—Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling author of Present Over Perfect and Bread & WineBorn with the gift of hospitality, Kreis Beall helped create one of the nation’s most renowned resort destinations, Blackberry Farm, in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountain foothills. For decades, she was a fixture in the travel and entertaining world and frequently appeared in the pages of popular home and design magazines. But at the pinnacle of her success, Kreis faced a series of challenges that reframed her life, including a brain injury that permanently impaired her hearing and the conclusion of her thirty-six-year marriage to her best friend and business partner, Sandy Beall. Alone and uncertain as her world shifts and marriage ends, Kreis begins a new journey to find her faith and find God. After spending years on her beautiful exterior life and work, she begins the hardest undertaking of all: reclaiming and redesigning her interior life and soul. Kreis retreats to Blackberry Farm, moving into an unassuming, 300-square-foot shed with peeling paint on the exterior walls, “where I met myself for the first time.” She examines what it takes to redefine life after deep loss and acknowledges, for the first time, often unbearable truths that existed beneath the beauty she had created. By turns fiercely honest, heartbreaking, and warm, Kreis Beall’s story will resonate with anyone who can benefit from her discovery that “All it takes is all you’ve got. And it is worth it.”
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