Book Review | Book Review | The Suffering of a Child: A Family’s Journey Through Childhood Terminal Cancer

By Joanna Hingston

This review first appeared on the AP Website: https://ap.org.au/2026/01/15/book-review-heather-so-the-suffering-of-a-child/

Heather So’s The Suffering of a Child provides a rare window into the unimaginable grief of a Christian family walking through a terminal diagnosis for a young child. Drawing directly from her personal journals, Heather recounts the raw pain and trauma of watching her four-year-old daughter, Emily, suffer from terminal brain cancer, and the subsequent wider impact of this suffering.

This book offers a profound insight into the complexities of life and motherhood—loving, suffering, and serving others amid devastating loss. It explores the agony of a terminal diagnosis and the unbearable reality of facing the death of a child, while also revealing the impact of grief on the family as a whole: on the marriage, on siblings, and on the wider family network. Heather So does not offer easy answers. Instead, she pours out her heart and her powerlessness in this unthinkable situation, guiding Em, her sisters, and ultimately us to the sure and certain hope found in Jesus.

As we read, we hear echoes of the Holy Spirit who groans with us when our words fail (Rom.8:26-27). We see a mother’s instinct to save her child—protecting, caring, researching, working, and desperately praying—colliding with the heartbreaking reality of human powerlessness. In this, Heather reminds us that we are ultimately incapable of saving ourselves, of saving our children, so we must rest instead in the hands of the One who holds all things in His hands.

What does it mean to trust the Lord of the Universe when the answer to your prayers is “No”?

At the heart of the book, we see a family grappling with what it means to trust God as they walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We hear them as they cry out to the Lord in the prayers of the Psalmists, pleading for Em’s life. We bear witness to their trust in the Lord, the Giver of Life. We hear their faithful submission to His will.

More poignantly, throughout this book we listen to the So family as they gently shepherd their girls to trust that God is good even when bad things happen. In the daily rhythms of family life, around the dinner table, we hear of their family devotions where the thoughts of their hearts are laid bare. BJ and Heather tenderly point their three girls to trust in the Lord who knows their hearts, hears their prayers, and—as the Sovereign of all—holds His own plans for us. We see them gently caring for Em, preparing her to meet the Lord, and tenderly caring for their two older girls—weeping with them and pointing them to the Lord who is good all the time. In these moments, we weep as we witness their powerlessness to save Em, their surrender to the Lord’s will, the breaking of their hearts, all the while tenderly teaching their daughters that God sometimes says ‘No’ to our prayers, and yet He is still good.

The pastoral gold in this book lies in the way Heather tenderly and truthfully names what it is like to suffer in community—the love, the sense of being overwhelmed, the pressure, and the well-meaning words that comfort or unintentionally wound. She teaches us how to comfort those who mourn and reminds us that we serve a God who knows what it is to suffer. The Suffering of a Child is a difficult but necessary read for anyone seeking to understand the suffering of childhood terminal illness and how to hold fast to the sovereignty of God even when the Lord says ‘No’.