Book excerpt: When a song connects with us on an almost molecular level, and we'd swear that whoever wrote that song either lived our life or read passages from our most personal journal entries, we discover that we're not as alone as we might have thought we were. Somebody else knows, or they couldn't have written that song in that particular way. Those songs tell us that we have something in common with their writers, but often it seems that the songwriters know more about us than we know about them. In Hold On, the Light Will Come: And Other Lessons My Songs Have Taught Me, Michael McLean lets us read the songwriter's most personal journal entries. We are invited behind the scenes to experience the parts of his life that led to more than twenty albums of songs about hope and healing and holding on. Candid, insightful, hopeful, funny, and honest, this book gives an account of the lessons Michael's songs have taught him -- or rather, how writing his songs has helped him to process the lessons that life sooner or later tries to teach us all. Included is a CD with the songs he writes about so personally in this memoir. "By writing this book," says Michael, "I hope that people who've heard some of my songs before will hear them differently. And maybe those who are hearing them for the first time will understand my belief that songwriters know that they don't really own the songs they've written ... they just heard them first." Book jacket.