February 26 2020

Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth (2018)
By Sarah Smarsh

Born into a family of generations of teenage mothers who worked hard as farmers' wives, waitresses, or (in more recent times) blue-collar jobs, where there was food on the table but never enough for dental appointments or new shoes, Sarah writes this memoir to her own imagined child.  She adores her farmer/construction worker father Nick, one of the few kind men in her family constellation (her step-grandfather Arnie is the other), but has a complicated relationship with her mom.  She adores her grandmothers; Nick's mom Theresa is a crusty German Catholic who in turn adores Sarah.  Betty, Sarah's maternal grandmother, is only in her 30s when Sarah is born and married to Arnie, her 7th husband.  But Arnie loves Betty and works hard to keep his farm going, and they provide more stability to Sarah than her own divorced (and remarried to others) parents, who move so frequently that Sarah changes schools several times each school year, until she moves in with her grandparents and stays in the same high school.  There she proves to be a good student and determines to earn a college scholarship, and mostly to not repeat her mother's and maternal grandmother's trend of early motherhood.

I listened to the audio book, narrated by the author, who shares her story with neither sentimentality nor judgment.  It's clear she loves her dysfunctional family, but she also makes clear that those in the heartland who grow the produce and raise the animals we eat live on the margins of economic viability, which leads to insecurity and sometimes to social problems like substance abuse and sexual abuse.

February 23 2020

Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness (2019)
By Jennifer Berry Hawes

Journalist Hawes takes the reader aside the lives of the 9 victims (and 3 survivors) of the Charleston Church shooting of June 17, 2015.  Most well-known was Rev Clementa Pinckney, also a state senator, whose funeral speaker was President Obama.  We meet Pinckney's widows Jennifer, and their two young daughters.  We meet Felicia Sanders, who survived the shooting but lost her son Tywanza and 87-year-old Aunt Susie.  All of Emanuel AME church's leaders have been killed and a new pastor, Norvel Goff, is assigned to lead the bereft church.  Sadly, he is not interested in consoling the grieving families (and even stands up Felicia when she tries to see him).  On another occasion, he refuses to let Felicia and the other adult survivor into the church building.  When the church is deluged with donations, however, Goff fires the church's long time secretary who knows the church and its members, and instead hires new employees to open the envelopes, but there is no record-keeping and victims' families receive empty envelopes, torn open with no explanations.  Felicia is introduced to the pastor of the mainly white Second Presbyterian Church, who warmly welcomes her and meets with her each week; eventually she finds a new home at Second Pres, while tourists fill the pews of Emanuel.

There is little new to learn of the killer Dylan Roof, a young loner who found white racism online and whose senseless act led to at least one positive outcome: the removal of the confederate flag, a symbol of oppression, from the state house in Columbia, an act in which the young governor, Nikki Haley, plays a part.  At Roof's hearing, many of the victim's families stun a waiting world: rather than spew hate, they opt to forgive the young man or ask God to have mercy on him.  The book concludes with the healing words of President Obama, when he addressed the congregation at Clem Pinckney's funeral, commending God's grace, and opting to lead the congregation in singing "Amazing Grace".

Feb 13 2020

Tehran Children – A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey

By  Mikhal Dekel

In this book Mikhal Dekel traces the story of her father’s childhood, from the child of a Jewish brewery owner in Poland, to exile in the Siberian labor camps, to refugee camps in Uzbekistan, to refugee status in Iran, and finally to kibbutz life in Israel.  She traces the history of Polish victims of world War II, without any sugar-coating, relating the terrible struggles they went through just to stay alive.  She also documents the discrimination between ethnic Poles and Jewish Poles – discrimination imposed by Russians, British, and others who had power over these refugees.

In our day and time we wouldn’t necessarily think of Iran as a place where Jewish or Polish/Catholics would be welcomed and sheltered, but this book reminded me that today is not the same world that existed in the time of World War II.  It also reminded me that the administration of refugee relief is not always done by saints.

This is not a book of triumph, but a personal search for understanding of what made her father into the man he was.  The various characters are not heroes, but are humans – sometimes deeply flawed, but they are survivors.  At the end, one comes away with the feeling that Ms. Dekel has come to a much clearer view of her father as a man who went through terrible times, and who was molded by them.

Only 1000 children traveled this tortured path from Poland to Israel, out of the millions of Jewish people displaced and/or murdered in the Second World War, but the story is arresting in telling about a little known group of survivors.

Guest review by Dewey Christy (Thanks, Dewey)

February 2 2020

A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith (2019)
By Timothy Egan

Journalist Timothy Egan's account of making the 1000+-mile pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome is one of the most inspiring, engaging travel books I've ever read.   The Via Francigena is longer and much less known than El Camino and Egan has provided a combination travel account, historical record, and personal memoir as he recounts his own spiritual journey, sharing the ups and downs of beautiful scenery, blisters, and searing heat along the way.

Egan is a lapsed Catholic who wants to believe.  His beloved sister-in-law Margie has advanced cancer, and he prays for a miracle cure for her as he makes his way to Rome.  Starting his journey in Great Britain, he notes, "Say what you will about faith, but it anchored a nation for centuries", as he laments the country's spiritual unmooring.  He then marvels "that a belief founded on a gospel of love could cause so much pain" (and will cite historical examples along the way) as well as refer to the tragedy of clergy sexual abuse, which led to the suicide of a close family friend.  Yet Egan is encouraged by the current Pope, and hopes to meet Francis at the end of his pilgrimage.

As he walks through France, he sees majestic cathedrals - some are nearly empty these days while others have become tourist destinations, like the beautiful medieval city of Laon.  Saint Jeanne d'Arc was a controversial figure, martyred at age 19, the only person condemned to heresy by the same faith that made her a saint - "evidence," Egan says, "of the deep bewilderment about women in a church run by men.  I don't know why so many of the church elite were afraid of women with power, and why so many still are.  The elevation of one sex does not have to be the diminishment of another." (p 94)

Walking through areas that saw such heavy concentrations of killing (17 M in the Great War alone), the author pauses at the reconstructed Arras cathedral and ponders why Germany, which produced so many brilliant Christian philosophers, would pulverize the original cathedral - a space devoted to the same God they worshipped - to dust.  Over and over, he asks, "How can you join a faith whose nation-state followers have spent most of their years killing others of the same creed?"  and yet, today, the church shows signs of hope.  Back in Calais, asylum seekers have come from Aleppo and Mosul and it is the Catholic Church trying to distribute food and clothes, as well as provide portable showers for the refugees to clean up, as local police try to block these wanderers from services they feel will render them a public nuisance.

In Switzerland, the author is joined for a week by his con Casey and in northern Italy, by his daughter Sophie.  He is cheered by these interludes and on one occasion, Sophie comes to the rescue with bandages and salve for her dad's aching feet.  Much like Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods with his sometimes companion Katz, the book brightens with the addition of a fellow traveler.  Yet, it never suffers from their absence, as Egan's research is so thorough and his own shared thoughts so absorbing.  He only rarely runs into other pilgrims, although that will change as Egan gets closer to Rome, when his wife Joni is able to join him for those last days of walking, taking a brief respite from caring for Margie.

Many of the towns provide guest houses for pilgrims, some in old monasteries.  At the inn of the Augustinians at St Bernard, he is charmed by the dogs, "comically huge", weighing as much as him.  He finds the mountains refreshing and the air clear, the sound of the cowbells charming.  Churches  are almost always open for introspection.

Curious but skeptical about the many relics and stories of miracles he hears along the way, the author visits the crypt of St Lucia Filippini in Montifiascone, Italy.  She has been pronounced "incorruptible", meaning her body (dead nearly 300 years) has not decayed.  What Egan experiences in her crypt will change his perspective.  As St Augustine said, "Miracles are not contrary to nature, but only contrary to what we know about nature." (p 78)  And he reflects on the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, remembered from his undergraduate days at a Jesuit college: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  But spiritual beings having a human experience."

"If England is the reason-based start of this Christian trail, and France the cynical center, Italy is soaked in the supernatural near the finish" (p 285), and Timothy Egan is clearly a wiser man by the end of his pilgrimage.

After reading this account, I would love to make this pilgrimage myself.  But, even though I am only a few years older than the author when he made the trek, it is not likely to happen.  I'm thankful that I could experience the pilgrimage through such a wise observer's lens.