Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau (Thomas Nelson, 2025)
Reviewed by Liv Ross
Josh Nadeau is a Christian artist based out of western Canada. His artwork blends the American Traditional style with deeply symbolic imagery akin to ancient Christian iconography. His work does not reject contemporary design in favour of ancient tradition, but seeks to blend the two. Each post on his Instagram page – Sword and Pencil – is packed with details pointing to deeper spiritual realities, and the captions explore those realities in simple and spare sentences.
While Nadeau makes careful use of clean lines and simple colours, he does not use his art or platform to paint a fluffy, organized, and ultimately declawed picture of Christianity. Wild animals and wild men with swords, blood, and skulls often make their appearances. This art fully presents both Resurrected reality and the wild stories of the Old Testament prophets and the hill of Golgotha that got us there. His images take several cues from historic church traditions. These are ancient images and ancient truths depicted in his own particular way.
In February of 2025, Nadeau added ‘author’ to his resume with the publication of his first book Room for Good Things to Run Wild. While the tagline reads “How ordinary people become everyday saints,” it is not a step-by-step guide of do’s and don’t’s. He tells a story. Through the book, Nadeau takes us through his own Dantean journey from the heights of material success, into the jolt of spiritual sickness, and down through the gates of Rock Bottom — to ascend, ultimately, the difficult, slow spiral back upward.
The book opens with the angel’s provocative question from the Gospel of Luke: “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” Here, the angel asks Mary and her companions why they search for Christ where he is not. Whereas the women were seeking Christ in a tomb, Nadeau seeks to find him in a 5:00am double of bourbon. Like the dark wood with which Dante’s Inferno begins, Nadeau opens with darkness and a jolting awake to realize that something is very wrong. He has the familiar veneer of a successful career in finance, a marriage, a church community. His inner life, however, is overrun with darkness. With rage. Disconnection. Pain. He develops a dependence on alcohol to keep the surface smooth enough to maintain the image.
A familiar story, Nadeau isn’t telling his version because it is somehow different or special. I suppose that every single one of us has fallen into our moment of waking up in the dark wood. We all recognize the dissipation and disappointment of a daily life nowhere near the abundance-filled promise of Christ. We all have our vices that we turn to in order to get by. Josh’s story is not new, and the way he tells it really isn’t new, either. This might seem like a critical observation when newness and novelty is a major selling point; however, I came to know Nadeau’s work through his careful use of modernized art styles influenced and informed by ancient iconographic practices, and found that he uses this same method in his writing. Using parallels, he brings in saints and writers from across history to help him as he journeys through his personal inferno and purgatorio. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis take their turns filling the role of Virgil. There is the cyclical nature of his journey, traveling around actual and metaphorical mountains and facing both trials and triumphs. He even passes out a few times in a very Dantean fashion.
There are other allusions to stories, some ancient like Christ’s parables or The Way of the Pilgrim, others less so like Dostoevsky and Steinbeck’s novels, and even those revolving around popular figures such as Rocky Balboa. All of these are woven together along with personal sketches of pastors, therapists, friends, and his wife, Aislinn. The old and the new come together.
Another element to note is Nadeau’s use of physical movement throughout his narrative. While the Christian journey is not simply a spiritual one, it can be easy to tell a personal redemption story that deals with great spiritual change and limits physical involvement to, “And then I stopped drinking.” Nadeau frequently uses walking, biking, hiking and boxing to keep the physical and metaphysical tied together. It is a moving story in a fairly literal sense. Important questions are asked on a bike ride to work. Epiphanies are reached on a walk to the grocery store. Truths are retrieved on a hiking trail to an Irish abbey.
He notes speed, effort, colour, temperature, and discomfort as carefully as he notes his thought processes, all of which lead to some very beautiful passages: “The brush is thick here, and it’s that same burning-rust colour, alive against the cobalt sky and frothing river, against the golden fleece and hazel antlers of the stag.” And it leads, too, to some rougher ones: “it’s a short walk up the street, unlocking the door beside the restaurant entrance, walk up the entryway stairs, open my apartment door, grab a trash can, and head to my room.” Nadeau tells an embodied story that matters because it is inextricably set in the real world we inhabit in our very real bodies.
Weaving our way back to the tagline, “How ordinary people become everyday saints,” readers may find it to be a little bit misleading. There is no 12 Step Program offered, and Nadeau makes clear throughout that his story is not offered as a blueprint. (Which is comforting. The re-direction of his life was cemented by a several month trip to the UK. I feel it’s safe to say that this is not reliably replicable for many people). The book functions more like a testimony to the fact that ordinary people can become everyday saints. Testimonies are for encouragement rather than instruction. The Lord knew what Nadeau and his wife needed for them to walk more closely with him, and he opened that way. I never got the feeling, while reading, that Nadeau advocated for crossing oceans, or even crossing denominations in order to find a closer and satisfying relationship with God. What I did find was another person who recognized the same need that I felt, and who was coming from the same waters that I swim in. Stories of saints throughout church history are wonderful and necessary, but can sometimes seem far removed from the world we walk in now. To have someone generously share, not only the ins and out, but the ups and downs of this journey to sainthood, in the same age with the same temptations, distractions, divisions and rumours of wars, it is encouraging.
I do want make a final note, which is that I was pleased to see that in making his way into the written word, Nadeau did not leave behind his artistry that first drew me to his work. His visuals are woven into the book with pictograms for both section and chapter headings. Each section, or Act, is ended with a liturgical prayer and visual compendium of images for the events and observations covered in the section. These build upon each other across the book into a final, comprehensive splash page. It is filled with his signature clean lines and contrasting colours. The boldness grabs your attention, and the intricacy invites you to stay and contemplate.
is an urban monk, a poet, and essayist writing in and from the Ozarks. She serves on the Traces Journal editorial team as Reviews Editor for Poetry. In addition to writing, Liv practices gardening, pipe-smoking, leather-working, music-making, and mischief. She has been published in Fare Forward, The Front Porch Republic, Silence and Starsong, Solum Journal, and VoeglinView.
is an artist and author from the West Coast of Canada. He has appeared on numerous podcasts, written articles for magazines and websites, and has created art for Jordan Peterson’s History of Western Civilization, as well as churches, musicians, and other organizations, like The Chosen, Searock, Vuvivo, and the Daily Wire. He has his Undergrad in Physics, a Master’s in Theological Studies, and a doctorate from the School of Hard Knocks. He is a husband to Aislinn and a father to Ransom. He spends his days reading, writing, bouldering, and trying to enjoy every good and perfect Gift. Josh is the founder of Sword and Pencil and Every Day Saints.
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