From award-winning author James Bass comes a brutally honest memoir that rips the veil off a shattered life. Some lives are wrecked by chaos. Some are reforged by it. He thought he was just surviving...he was wrong. Every heartbreak was a calculated strike. Every silence, a sacred breath. Every betrayal, every breakdown, every dark night was the hand of God, chiseling him from the wreckage of addiction, abuse, and madness into a warrior with purpose. God doesn't just rescue you. He remakes you. He doesn't just save you. He sends you. Bass's journey is not just a memoir. It’s a manifesto for the broken, a battle cry for the desperate, and a defiant shout against the darkness. If you’ve ever screamed into the void, begging for a sign... this is your book. If you’ve ever felt lost in the wreckage... this is your roadmap to redemption. If you’ve ever wondered if God still moves... this is your proof. He sees you. He's moving. And He’s not just fighting for you—He’s fighting through you. ★★★★★ "I Was Playing Checkers While God Was Playing Chess is part memoir, part testimony, and all heart. It's the story of a man who lived through a mountain of trauma. Abuse, racism, addiction, marital struggles, and found God moving in places he didn't expect. Every chapter uses a chess move to explain a turning point in his life, like how his grandmother giving him an encyclopedia set as a boy set the stage for him to one day decode complex psychiatric info and care for his wife. It's deeply personal, packed with emotion, and reads like someone sitting across the table, telling you their truth. One chapter that really hit me was "The Fork" about his abuelita. She steps in during his horrible childhood, gives him love, and literally hands him books when no one else believed in him. That whole section had me teary-eyed. It reminded me how sometimes the smallest gestures change everything. And the way he ties it back later, like decades later, to how he understood medical texts to help his wife, was amazing. That's not just a good story. That's fate with a plan. I could feel how much those books meant to him. It wasn't just about reading. It was about survival. Then there's Crystal. She's not just his wife. She's a whole force of nature. That part where she tells him, "I love you for the man you're going to become," after he's cheated and blown up their marriage? I had to put the book down for a second. That line wrecked me. You feel the weight of what they've been through, but you also feel the hope. The love between them isn't pretty or easy, but it's real. The mental health stuff is raw, too. He talks about psychosis, ER visits, and disappearing acts. And yet there's faith threaded through it all, like a lifeline. Later on, when he talks about writing his first book and speaking publicly, it's a total shift. That's when you realize the guy who used to think he was worthless is now lifting other people up. There's this full-circle moment when he reconnects with an old boss who turns out to be a pastor. The way it all lines up? It's wild. It feels earned. I could see the gears turning in his life even when he couldn't. That made me look at my own life differently. Like maybe all this chaos has some kind of pattern. If you've ever felt like you were getting hit from all sides and couldn't see the bigger picture, this book is for you. If you've ever loved someone who was hard to love, or were that person yourself, this book is for you. It's not fancy or polished. But it's real and full of heart."- Literary Titan