In 1977 Gwen, the wife of David Wilkerson wrote a book entitled In His Strength in which she shared testimony of the path she and her well known husband had taken both in their public ministry and private sufferings. This new book takes in those years and continues up to the present. She and her husband have been married fifty-five years. She herself has suffered a number of surgeries for cancer over many years, two of her daughters likewise, in all, in the family, there have been nine cancers and the book is a simple statement of the disappointments and victories that they have known through all these things. It chronicles the enduring faith of the Wilkerson family through suffering, heartache and disease. All this is written from Gwen’s perspective and is a helpful portrayal of things not seen as she lived in the shadow of her husband’s successful and public ministry. She was completely content in her role of mother and wife as her husband engaged in his ministry. For forty years the name of David Wilkerson has been known for his work among teenage gangs in New York, The Cross and the Switchblade publicized that ministry far and wide. In the more recent years the church he and his wife established in Times Square New York has been a place known for a clear ministry of God’s word. She candidly shares details of the period where both she and her husband contemplated separation and divorce, and of the way the Lord came to both of them through the help of prayer and His word. There is an inspirational quality in this book as Gwen’s perseverance and faith are disclosed along with the steady continuance in the different phases of his ministry that David obediently fulfilled as he sought God for His leadings. What is most helpful in this book is the weaving of the tapestry of the ordinary and the extraordinary in the life of this famous family, the suffering and the glory, the loss and the gain and all is written with honesty from the feminine point of view
