Daniel Shenk, with Joyce Maxwell, Search for a Blessing: A Gay Man’s Journey from a Mennonite Missionary Childhood to the Streets of AIDS Activism
For immediate release!
Available at of April 6 at Amazon.ca and Amazon.com!
Publisher: Pandora Press (Director: Maxwell Kennel, [email protected])
Daniel Shenk, with Joyce Maxwell, Search for a Blessing: A Gay Man’s Journey from a Mennonite Missionary Childhood to the Streets of AIDS Activism (Pandora Press, May 1, 2026; paperback; ISBN-13: 978-1-77873-042-9; $31 CAD / $22 USD)
Search for a Blessing: A Gay Man’s Journey from a Mennonite Missionary Childhood to the Streets of AIDS Activism is an inspirational memoir by Daniel Shenk, who was on the forefront as an activist during the AIDS crisis in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s. Co-authored by Joyce Maxwell, the memoir is a narrative of a young man who is raised in an isolated region of East Africa with his Mennonite missionary parents and who eventually leaves that community for New York City. As gay men are growing sick and dying from an illness that no one yet understands, Shenk becomes a chaplain for the disenfranchised and a founding member of Bailey House, a residence for people with AIDS. This memoir is also a story of family, as Shenk grapples with a demanding father and struggles to relate to his conservative siblings.
In Search for a Blessing, Shenk’s missionary childhood doesn’t prepare him for what comes next. He wants to be ordained, but he has a secret, and nothing in his background gives him words to describe it: he is gay. Knowing the rules of the Mennonite church at the time, he knows what he must do to lead an authentic life.
Separated from his family, all in East Africa, Shenk is no stranger to mustering his courage: he survived sexual assault as a child and young man and lost his mother to a tragedy when he is only 20. Through the study of existentialist theology, he reinterprets his family’s culture of service and eventually becomes deeply involved in New York City’s AIDS crisis, finding resources for men who find themselves suddenly homeless. For a period, he works in corrections on Rikers Island, becoming a chaplain there and elsewhere, caring for those society pushed to the margins. He finds solace in the company of Edwin, the love of his life, even as Edwin suffers from AIDS. Embracing the radical Christian activism of Judson Memorial Church, some mending begins between him and his father.
Memoirs about leaving high-control religion—such as David Archuleta’s Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself and Tia Leving’s The Well-Trained Wife—are currently popular. At such a time, Search for a Blessing speaks especially to readers who seek a spiritual map or framework following their own abuse or alienation. It also speaks to LGBTQ+ readers, their families and allies, and those interested in micro-histories: the early AIDS epidemic in New York City and early Mennonite missions in East Africa.
Daniel Shenk served as a chaplain and activist in New York City for most of his adult life and is now retired and living in Virginia. Joyce Maxwell, a writer and editor of biographies who also lives in Virginia, began recording her uncle Daniel Shenk’s stories during the COVID-19 lockdown. Her website is joycemaxwell.com.