A Dream So Big: Our Unlikely Journey to End the Tears of Hunger
by Steve Peifer, Gregg Lewis
Why You'll Love This
A man fleeing grief over a dying infant ends up feeding 20,000 Kenyan children — and neither outcome was remotely planned.
- Great if you want: faith-driven memoir about accidental purpose found through crushing loss
- The experience: emotionally raw early chapters give way to something genuinely inspiring
- The writing: Peifer writes with disarming honesty — no tidy lessons, just lived experience
- Skip if: faith-centered narratives feel too familiar or formulaic to you
About This Book
What does a man do when grief strips away everything he thought mattered? For Steve Peifer, the answer began with the death of an infant son and ended—if it has ended at all—with tens of thousands of Kenyan children eating lunch every day because he showed up and refused to look away. This is not a tidy story of loss redeemed by good intentions. It is the account of an ordinary family that walked into extraordinary suffering, both their own and others', and discovered that the two were somehow connected. The stakes are as real as a child's hunger and as personal as a father's broken heart.
What distinguishes this book is Peifer's voice: self-deprecating, honest, and free of the triumphalism that burdens so many missionary memoirs. He writes like a man still slightly surprised by his own life, which makes the reader trust him completely. Gregg Lewis shapes the narrative with enough momentum to carry 336 pages without ever letting the story feel bloated or sentimental. The result is a book that earns its emotional weight through specificity and restraint rather than manipulation.