Published by 23rd St on April 28, 2026
Genres: Non-Fiction, Biography, Memoir
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Interrogating her own upbringing in an evangelical community, Stephanie Stalvey weaves a story of faith, alienation, romance and acceptance, in this beautifully painted graphic memoir. Perfect for fans of Blankets by Craig Thompson and Fun Home by Alison Bechdel.
"Everything was either black or white. Pure or impure."
Stephanie grew up in an evangelical community where sin was inescapable, her body was a temptation, and desire was something to be feared. She was convinced that her thoughts couldn't be trusted, therefore obedience was paramount. She was only safe if she believed the "right things" about God.
But as she built a life of her own, fell in love with James, and became a mother, the complexities of the human experience became impossible to ignore. Was God truly so exacting and judgmental? Could faith exist without shame? Could love be both passionate and pure? Her connection to James- honest, aching, and sensual- became a safe place for her worldview to expand and grow.
Through striking prose and beautiful mixed-media illustrations, Stalvey takes us on an emotional journey of faith, romance, motherhood, and loss. With tenderness and honesty, she unravels the fear and guilt woven into her past, reclaims her sense of self, and shows us how to embrace a love that is healing, transformative, and wholly one's own.
This book absolutely wrecked me. It’s not my story. It’s Stephanie’s. But as a pastor, it’s a story that I’ve heard time and time again. As someone who grew up within the evangelical-industrial complex—married to someone exactly the same—it’s a story that I’ve lived. The details are different, of course. Stalvey manages to weave a tale that is completely her own and yet, in a sense it is many of us. It’s a story of overcoming rigid authoritarianism, about the lingering effects of purity culture, about learning to love passionately and live freely and move beyond seeing life and faith in black and white to experiencing Everything in Color.
I cannot recall the last time I had such an emotional connection to a book. Memoirs are intensely personal anyway. Stalvey not only shares her story, but pours herself out on the page in beautifully-rendered artwork that adds depth and power to the story. The artwork isn’t there as a companion to the story or just to facilitate the flow of the narrative. There’s emotion and symbolism—in the movements from black-and-white to color, in the use of color and shading, in the background elements and staging of each frame. It’s thoughtful and passionate and hopeful and devastating and inspiring and anxiety-inducing and triumphant and joyous and sad and absolutely and completely fully and beautifully human.
Everything in Color is subtitled A Love Story. Even that has multiple layers. On its surface, the primary storyline is Stalvey’s relationship with her now-husband, James—a seminary student who did not grow up in the faith and whose experience with Christianity (and Christians) is much different than Stephanie’s. The book goes through their first meeting, the beginnings of a friendship, and then dwells quite heavily on the anxieties and difficulties of building a romantic relationship having grown up within purity culture. It’s complex and messy and the relationship almost doesn’t survive because of it.
But it’s also a love story between Stephanie and her son. Because the relationship does endure. Stephanie and James are married. They bring a child into the world. And for Stephanie that was—in more ways than one—a formative experience. Life is bursting with color, but now she’s left unsure of how to raise a child having only the experience of her own rigid, black-and-white childhood.
And it’s also a love story about learning to love oneself. Stalvey grew up in a faith that didn’t have much love for humanity. Sure, “God so loved the world” and all that, but also the only reason God saves you is because he sees Jesus in you. It’s a faith that demands both human depravity and hellfire and brimstone. Everything in Color traces Stalvey’s journey from being a child scared of going to hell, terrified to do anything that might be a sin, to being an adult living freely and abundantly within God’s grace. In particular, Stalvey learns how to love herself as a woman: her sexuality, her motherhood, her femininity. It rewrites the purity culture narrative into something more true and more lovely.
But also, this is a love story about loving God. The God that Stephanie Stalvey grew up with a cold and demanding. Their love was contingent on belief and behavior and the love they demanded from others had to be uncritical and absolute. As Stephanie grows up, meets James, and black-and-white moves to Everything in Color, it becomes more difficult to love God—or at least, God as she had known Them. This is a story about discovering the love of God and discovering a God to love. A story of deconstructing faith not to demolish it but to tear it down to its original foundations and rebuild. It is a story of love.
And that’s how it ends. Everything in Color isn’t mean or vindictive. Stalvey doesn’t lash out at her parents or her past. Just portrays it honestly and thoroughly and then recounts her long and messy journey toward a better way—a way that that she continues to pursue. This story is important because it is Stephanie’s, but also because Stephanie is so many of us Millennial evangelical kids who grew up exactly this way and are now floundering our way forward. Stalvey’s story shows us that there is hope, there is healing, there is rich and vibrant color.