Tag: book review

Four book reviews: The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life, and It Can’t Happen Here.

Richard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

(2013, Audible, 2014), 14 hours 59 minutes

What a complex book. At times I loved it and other times I wondered what I was doing immersing myself within these words. The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a title taken from Basho, a famous Japanese haiku poet from the 17^th Century, centers on the life of Dorrigo Evans. An Australian physician and surgeon, Evans reads the great literature of the world and serves in the Army. Captured on Java by the Japanese early in the Second World War, he and his fellow prisoners are sent to Western Thailand to build a railroad to Burma. While the story of the war unifies the novel, this is not just a book about war. Dorrigo carries with him a dark secret, but one of hope. Just prior to the war, he had an affair with Amy, his uncle’s young wife. Her memory haunts him in the jungles of Thailand and even after the war as he continues his career in medicine and begins his own family. 

Evans is a complicated character who is thrown into a horrible situation. As the highest-ranking officer among the POWs, he must make decisions to meet the Japanese quota of daily workers along his section of the railroad. These are life and death decisions, but he has no control. All the men are starving and disease prone. At one point, he must pick men for a march into the jungle to another camp. He makes the decision by picking out those with the best shoes. He fights with the Japanese for better food and medical supplies and rest for his men. He establishes a rough surgical hospital. He is tormented when he cannot save a man’s life because he lacks medicines and equipment. Yet, he is loved by the POWs and performs remarkably well despite the situation.

His personal life before and after the war was a mess and continues this way after the war. While he marries and provides well for his family, he is distant. He feels inadequate and guilty. He drowns his pain in numerous affairs. But, when his family is threatened by a fire in the bush, he arises to the occasion. His wife and children are amazed at this. For the first time, the children see his compassion, as well as the risks he takes to save his family. 

The story isn’t just about Dorrigo. We are given mini biographies of others who were at the POW camps. Some died there and their ghost remain with Dorrigo and his fellow survivors. Others live on, but their lives have all be affected by the terrible treatment they received as POWs. We also learn about some of the camps guards and Japanese officials during the war and afterwards. 

One of the cruelest guards is a Korean, the “Goanna.” Extremely brutal and sadistic in his treatment of prisoners, he is hanged for war crimes. Yet, I felt sorry for him. He was not Japanese. He joined the Japanese army (Japan had annexed Korea in the early 20^th Century) for the money. But Koreans were always seen as second-class citizens and instead of being in the real army, they were assigned duty as guards and such. His sister, lured also by money and the promise to help wounded soldiers, became a “Comfort Woman,” essentially a prostitute for the Japanese army. He bore the burden of learning what she had become. He also felt he was just doing his duty for a promise of 50 yen a month (A yen must have been worth a lot more back then!).  

Major Nakamura was the camp’s commander. He returns to Japan and hides his identity at first. He finds a job working with the Japanese blood bank. Years later, Nakamura has a conversation with a Japanese doctor who tells of the medical experiences he conducted on American POWs. The doctor confides that they did their duty and are safe as the allied armies want to put the war behind them. The doctor suggests that only the foolish and those from Korea and Taiwan were punished for war crimes. 

Flanagan shows the complexity of individuals, who can be compassionate and cruel, capable of appreciation of beauty and able to create what is ugly. Evans shows great compassion and leadership during the war and not so much before or afterwards. For Nakamura, it’s the opposite. He’s savage in the war and mellows afterwards. Not only do we see this through the characters but also through literature (both Western and Japanese). I am going to think about this book for some time to come!

I recommend this book with a warning. The descriptions of the POW experience are very realistic. Parts of the book read like a horror tale. Furthermore, at times, when discussing Evan’s relationships with women, I found myself thinking I could use a little description. Some of these parts seem like I was reading an “adult” romance novel. But when blended, this book left me pondering the human condition.

I listened to the unabridged version of this book on Audible.  I have been on the Burma-Thai railroad and to a few of the many huge cemeteries from those who died there: British, Australian, New Zealanders, Dutch, and Indian. These plots remain a sobering place. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

 (2003, Audible release 2018). Read by the author.  7 hours 46 minutes

I found this a delightful book that opened windows of understandings for often overlooked plants. Mosses are some of the simplest plants but are also very complex and important for the wellbeing of our planet. Drawing from her experience as a scientist, who studies moss, as well as her Native American heritage, Kimmerer weaves stories of her family and heritage into the larger story of moss. I enjoyed listening to her lyrical style of composition and since listening to this book, I have been looking at moss everywhere, on shady ground, rocks, on trees, and on rotting wood. I need to purchase and reread this book in print to capture all the names of the types of moss. The book is essentially a natural history of moss. In telling the story of moss, the plant becomes a metaphor for our lives.

“But the world is still unpredictable and still we survive by the grace of chance and the strength of our choices.” (at the end of chapter 12). 

Garrison Keillor, That Time of the Year: A Minnesota Life

 (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2020), 360 pages including a few photos. 

I received this book as a Christmas present and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Having listened to Keillor and the Prairie Home Companion since the 80s, much of the book felt like I was visiting old friends whom I’d met over the radio. This book gives us insight into Keillor’s life and the decisions that led him into radio and to becoming a well-known author. Throughout the book, one has the feeling that Keillor feels blessed with the ability to have done what he did through a radio show. He is gracious in giving thanks to those who have helped him along the way, from teachers and aunts, parents and friends, and to those in the business. He also writes graciously about those who performed on the show and the friends he made along the way. I was shocked to learn he had become friends of Michigan’s author, Jim Harrison. Harrison, best known from his novella that became the movie Legends of the Fall, listened to Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and the two began a correspondence. Keillor ends the book with a beautiful “sermon” on Psalm 100, which he summarizes as “In other words, lighten up. It isn’t about you. Improve the Hour.” 

I am sure there are parts of the book in which Keillor avoided topics and left things out (this is a memoir and not a autobiography, after all). However, he acknowledges the pain he caused to this first wife and the situation which led to him being removed from Public Radio during the rise of the “Me, Too” movement. With the latter, Keillor avoids making his accuser out to be evil, while maintaining his general innocence. He agreed that some of what he said to the woman may have been taken the wrong way but insists there was never anything to their email exchanges that rose to the level of the complaints. His bitterness is at how quickly Minnesota Public Radio decided that he was expendable. 

A few quotes: 

“Satire is perishable like lettuce.” 

“I wanted to have a long retirement and disappear into the sunset and outlive everyone qualified to give my eulogy.” 

Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here

 (1935, Audible 2016), 14 hours 28 minutes. 

I read this book in college or just afterwards, but decided to listen to it again (which I mostly did while driving or walking). The book begins at a civic function in a small town in Vermont in the run up to the 1936 election. While the book moves from character to character, the unifying stream is about a Vermont newspaper editor, Doremus Jessup. Written before the election of 1936, the book creates an alternative to history. FDR doesn’t even win his party’s nomination in 1936. Instead, a rogue candidate, Buzz Windrip, rises to power on the promise of giving everyone $6000 a year. He also has an army of supporters who, soon after taking over as President, goes into action. Quickly, the country descends into fascism.  Jessup, who had always played it safe as a newspaper editor, writes an editorial that gets him into trouble. He becomes politically involved with an underground movement. Arrested, Jessup finds himself in a concentration camp. After his escape, he makes his way to Canada to join exiled Americans working for an overthrow of the government. 

Surprisingly, although of a serious yet fictional subject matter, there is a lot of humor in this book. These words drip with satire. 

This book was written during the era of Huey Long and at the time of the rise of fascism in Europe. While dated, there is much to ponder. Demagogues are dangerous. This would be a good book for America to reread. 

I’m catching up on some recent reading…

Tilar J. Mazzero, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It. 

(Harpers Business, 2009), 264 pages. 

Late last year, I listened to the author’s “Great Courses” lectures on “Creative Nonfiction.” She often used examples of her own writing including this book. I was curious as to how she took what little personal knowledge is available about Clicquot and turn it into a book that remained “true” to the available facts. Mazzero uses a lot of qualifying words to suggest what her subject might have done or said. While this sometimes became annoying, I enjoyed the book. And I don’t particularly like champagne! 

The Widow Clicquot (Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin) was born into a wealthy French industrial family. He father had created a textile empire. At boarding school when the French revolutionary began, a family seamstress risked her life to rescue the young woman. Afterwards, during a time when the Catholic Church in France was frowned upon, she was married in a secret wedding to the son of another wealthy French industrialist. The marriage had benefits both, as both families were primarily involved in textiles. However, as was common among those whose fortunes were rising in France, they also had wineries. Her husband, Franciois Clicquot, decided that he would make his fortune in the champagne. During this period, champagne was just coming into its own and gaining popularity in England and in Russia.  

When she was 27, she found herself widowed with a child. She would never remarry. For years, she struggled to build the dream she and her husband held for their champagne business. At first, it seemed that every year created another setback. Sometimes it was the weather, other times it was global politics. Napoleon’s warmongering meant that France’s ports were often blockaded. Russia had been a hot market for champagne until Napoleon invaded. This led to an interesting story as one of her agents who were procuring orders barely escaped Russia with his life as he was seen possible spy.

After years of setback, champagne became more popular after the Napoleonic wars. As foreign forces pushed Napoleon back, they occupied the champagne region and fell in love with the drink.  Then she creates the “riddling table”, a new way to produce champagne, which took out some of the guess work and allowed for more streamlined production. She had racks built that held the cork opening down. The bottles were turned, drawing the dead yeast toward the opening, where they could be discarded and the bottled topped off with fresh champagne. This secret allowed her company to outproduce the other wineries producing champagne. Her wealth continued to grow.  By the middle of the 19^th Century, her bottles of champagne became known as “the Widow,” a reference that is often found in 19^th Century literature, when characters order champagne. 

I learned much from this book. Not only does the reader learn about with widow and her company, but also the history of champagne. Mazzero debunks the popular story that it was Dom Perignon who popularized the drink as “drinking the stars.” The book tells the story of the risks Barbe-Nicole and her business partners took to build their empire. Insight into 19^th Century trade, along with the development of trademarks and marking augment Barbe-Nichole’s story. However, due to the limited about of personal resources, many of Mazzero’s insights into Barbe-Nicole’s life is by inference and cannot be factually proven. 

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Cormac McCarthy,  Suttree

 (1979). Audible 20 hours and 22 minutes. 

I had a love/hate relationship with this book which I listened to on Audible. There isn’t really a plot, unless the plot is that everyone dies. But that’s not exactly true, just many of the secondary characters die.

However, the writing is mostly beautiful, with a few gross or raunchy scenes. McCarthy is a master storyteller and his descriptions brings places and people alive. This novel is a collection of vignettes from Sutrree’s life. Through his eyes we learn what life was like on skid row in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1950s. 

Suttree lives on a dilapidated houseboat and makes a meager living by fishing for catfish in the river. But there is something that separates Suttree from the rest of those who are down on their luck. For one, we catch a glimpse of his past. Through the story told, we learn he attended a Catholic school and latter college. He had also once been married and had a child. But for some reason he walks away from it all. He seems to enjoy the life down by the riverfront, even though he does get away at times and into the mountains. 

Those down and out in Knoxville look to Suttree for advice. Suttree takes on the role as their protector, as he tries to steer people the right way. His advice is generally good, such as discouraging Gene Harrogate from attempting to break out from the workhouse (a chain gang prison farm), telling him if he did, he’d be caught and would spend the rest of his life in and out of prison.  He befriends all: prostitutes, blacks, homosexuals, alcoholics, and drug addicts. 

While many of the characters are short-lived in their encounters with Suttree, Gene Harrogate keeps reappearing throughout the book. Even at the end, we learn he’s in prison for three to five years. Harrogate and Suttree first meets in the workhouse. We don’t really learn what Suttree did, but Harrogate is there for copulating with many watermelons, ruining a farmer’s crop. He’s always trying to find a way to “make it.” When the health department puts out a call for any found dead bats in town, promising a dollar a bat to check for rabies, Harrogate masters a way to wipe out a bat colony. However, once they learn the bats died by other means, they don’t pay him for the bats. Learning of the tunnels through the city, he concocts a plan to blow up the city’s vault. While much of Knoxville believe they’ve experienced a small earthquake, Suttree knows better and goes underground to find a wounded and stunned Hargrove stinking from the sewer lines that ruptured in his failed attempt to blow the vault.  

Suttree has two “romantic” encounters in the book. One is with a teenager daughter to his “freshwater mussel” partner. The mussel shells are sold to be manufactured into buttons (something I recently learned from the writings of Alice Outwater is a reason for the decline of freshwater mussels). She dies in a rockslide. The next is a prostitute. The two of them live it up for a short while, but then she has a breakdown and leaves. 

One of the more interesting vignettes is of Suttree and a black friend visiting an old Geechee witch. She puts him under a spell which creates a horrific vision. He has a similar horrific vision toward the end of the book when he has typhoid fever. I was expecting he was going to die, supporting the plot idea that “everyone dies.” However, he recovers and leaves town.  Hargrove, at the time, is in prison. 

Warning, if you read this book, there are rough spots, which one should expect when writing about those living on the margin of society. McCarthy shows that he can master the grotesque as well as Flannery O’Conner. 

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Julie Salamon, Ramban’s Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give

 (New York: Worksman Publishing, 2003), 183 pages. 

Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and physician during the Middle Ages, also known as Rambam, created a ladder of charity. Each of the eight rungs on the ladder represented a step toward more compassionate response to those in need. The bottom rung is the one who gives reluctantly and in a begrudging manner. Next would be the person who gives just a little, not enough, but in a friendly manner. Then there is one who gives when asked, then before being asked, then giving without knowing who the gift is for, then giving anonymously, then giving whether neither the one in need nor the giver knows one another. The highest run on the ladder is the one who helps lift the needy out of poverty by helping them start a business, giving them a job, or going in partnership with them. 

Salamon, in this book, goes through each step. With numerous examples, many from her own life (such as avoiding beggars along the New York Streets, then befriending one…), she illustrates each step. 

I recommend this book for those interested in becoming more generous. It would be an especially helpful book for someone speaking about generosity as she provides so many stories for illustration.

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Karen Cecil Smith, Orlean Puckett, 1844-1939: The Life of a Mountain Midwife

 (Boone, NC: Parkway Publishing, 2003), 166 pages. 

As I’ve been doing since I moved here last October, this another book that I read in my attempts to learn this new area I find myself ministering. A little over a mile north of Bluemont Presbyterian Church, along the Blueridge Parkway, there is a cabin with a historical marker about a famous midwife in these parks, Orlean Puckett. However, the cabin belonged her sister-in-law, Betty Puckett. Orlean’s larger home was torn down after the Park Service refused to allow her to live in it until her death. She died shortly after having to move and the parkway was open for traffic through southwest Virginia.   

There is a lot that is not known about Orlean. Even her birthyear is in question (some records said 1839). Before the Civil War, she married John Puckett. He would serve in the Confederate Army, but like many, he deserted and lived in the Virginia mountains for the rest of the war. There seems to be some question as if the two of them got along or if there was abuse. He did drink a lot, but Smith makes the case that two loved each other. Orlean had 24 babies. All but one died either in womb or shortly after birth. The one surviving, her firstborn, lived a few years. It is now thought she suffered from Rh Hemolytic disease, which was unknown at the time. While some may have thought the children died from mistreatment, it seems unlikely many felt that way since so many women on the mountain would employ her as a midwife. 

After taking on the role of midwife, for 49 years helped deliver over a thousand children. She would travel by foot or horse, all over the mountains, in all kinds of weather. She served as a midwife until just before she died.

Smith overcomes the lack of direct knowledge about much of Orlean’s life by providing a background into mountain ways of life, the history of midwifery, and the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are also interesting tidbits of folklore used by midwives. At times, the story seems a bit disjointed, but I found it interesting.  The book draws heavily on oral interviews, of which Smith quotes from extensively.

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Amy Peterson, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2020), 197 pages including notes.

Fifteen years ago, I read Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue by Paul Woodruff. Since then, I’ve read it several times and have spent considerable energy thinking about virtues. Perhaps this itch drew me to this book. In this age when truth seems so elusive, we need to have a conversation about virtue and how to ground society in that which is good.  

In her Introduction, Peterson writes about growing up in an evangelical Christian home in the later part of the 20^th Century. As a teenager, she watched as church leaders lambasted President Clinton as unfit for office. As a child, she was nurtured with stories of virtue collected by William Bennett. Later, she served a missionary stint in Southeast Asia. But she began questioning what she had been taught. The watershed moment was the election of Donald Trump and the flipflop of evangelical leaders who accepted or willingly forgave Trump’s behavior. She began to question if those who claimed to be virtuous in the 90s were only doing so as a way to “preserve power and keep everyone in place.” This soul-searching led Peterson to “reimage” a world built on Biblical virtues.  And, it appears, her faith has become stronger and grounded more firmly in the Biblical tradition.

What a virtuous world might look like:

Lament

Where Goodness Still Grows is Peterson’s attempt to outline what a virtuous world might look like. She explores nine spheres, as she tells her own story as well as digging deep into the Biblical story and the story of others. Lament is the first area explored. Having been steeped in “praise services,” lament becomes a useful tool for crying out to God for what is wrong in our world.

Kindness

The second area explore is kindness. She breaks apart the word that has evolved from an Old English concept of maintaining one’s position along the economic ladder. This leads her to come to an uncomfortable understanding about how her parents and grandparent’s “kindness” provided her with a status not enjoyed by many within minority groups. Her Biblical understanding of kindness requires her to see God’s image in everyone and may possibly require a redistribution wealth. 

Hospitality

Peterson explores includes hospitality, where she questions how evangelicals can be so against immigration. 

Purity and Modesty

She challenges the evangelical church’s link to purity and modesty only to sexuality. She finds no support for this within scripture. the Bible ties purity to the Temple. Modesty is often about not flaunting wealth. By linking modesty to how women dress, is to miss the Biblical view and also to create a low standard for men who need to have women dress themselves in a modest manner to keep their “animal instincts’ in check. 

Authenticity

Peterson recalls her desire to be authentic. Within the church she grew up in, praying spontaneously was viewed as authentic. Rote prayers were inauthentic. As she matured (and later found a home within the Episcopal Church), she understood a different view of authenticity. Writing about authenticity, she comes back to the evangelical support of Trump. She believes his ability to be spontaneous and having fresh ideas drew evangelicals. Instead, Peterson ties Biblical authenticity to being a disciple of Christ, clothed with the virtues of Colossians 3:12. However, this does not mean that one can’t be authentic if one isn’t a believer.God’s image allows us the ability to be authentic. At the end of the chapter, she makes the case that spontaneity shouldn’t be tied to authenticity within the church. “Authentic Christians” practice daily the role given. We are sinners, “saved by and growing in grace.” 

Love and Hope

Another areas Peterson explores is love. She finds love often contradicted in evangelism training that tended, in her experience, to objectify others. Another area is discernment. We cannot logically prove everything. There must be room for mystery. Finally, she investigates hope through an extended metaphor of raising chickens, which gives her a whole new understanding on Jesus’ lament on how he’d like to be a mother hen and protect Jerusalem under his wings. As a mother, this image is powerful for Peterson. Her chickens and other “homesteading” projects helps her understand our humanity. There is hope in being “gathered like children under a mother’s wing.”

My recommendation

In her introduction, Peterson suggests that her work isn’t the “definitive answer about virtue.” But she hopes it will raise questions. This she does. Peterson also leaves those of us who have never brought into a more simplistic view of the world as presented by fundamentalist Christianity with a little more hope. Hopefully, her book will encourage Christians to think about truth and what God wants for our world. If you read this book, I’m curious as to your take on it.

Reviews of other good books on similar topics:

Arthur C. Brooks, Love Your Enemies
John Kasich, It’s Up to Us
P. M. Forni, The Civility Solution: What to Do When People are Rude

2020 has come to an end. It was a year that we’ll not forget. Personally, it didn’t rise up to the trauma of 2016 (when I ruptured my quad-tendon, was in the hospital with sepsis following a prostate biopsy, and dealt with a tropical storm and later Hurricane Matthew), but it was still a terrible year. Stuck at home with a pandemic and unable to escape from the political rhetoric made for some long days. Vacations were cancelled. I still haven’t been to Fenway Park (which was scheduled for mid-June). And we enter 2021 with much of the same going on. The pandemic is raging and the political rhetoric hasn’t tone down. Maybe the best thing to do is to escape into a puzzle or a good book.

The puzzle above was done in our house between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It is of Shakespeare’s London and you can see snippets from 16 or so plays within the puzzle, along with others from his era (Queen Elizabeth I, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake). It wasn’t the easiest puzzle but a icy rain on Christmas Eve that turned into snow meant there was no reason to get out, so time was put into finding the pieces.

2020 Reading Summary:

Number of books: 53 of which 37 were reviewed in my blog
Categories: History, Biography and Memoir: 18; Bible, Theology, Church: 11, Poetry: 7; Fiction: 6

A few insights into my reading:

-I have now read the first four volumes of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. Like a lot of others who are interested in this man and this period of history, I am impatiently waiting for his fifth volume (the fourth just got us through John’s first year in the White House after Kennedy’s death).
-Four of the authors I’ve read are good friends and I have met another six of the authors.
-With the racial troubles our country faces, I found myself reading several African American theologians and a new history of the 1898 Wilmington (NC) racial troubles (or atrocity). One of the books on my TBR pile deals with the Tulsa race war.
-I am spending more and more time with poetry (and I alway read books of poetry at least twice).
-It appears I need to read more fiction!

My favorite books:

In my opinion the best book I read during the year was Andy Rooney’s My War, followed by S. C. Gwynne’s biography of Stonewall Jackson. This is my second book by Gwynne (I read his biography of Quanah Parker, Empire of the Summer Moon, in 2017). If God is willing, I’ll read whatever else he publishes. My favorite fiction book was Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, which is a historical fiction account of the Battle of Thermopylae. If you don’t remember that battle, don’t worry. Ii occurred a few years before our time…

Here’s My listing of books read (posted by the order I finished the book), along with links to those I reviewed:

James Clavell, Tai-Pan
Patrick McManus, Kerplunk!
David Swift, Swift: New and Collected Poems
David Sedaris, Theft by Findings: Diaries
Chad Faries, Drive Me Out of My Mind
Marcia McFee, Think Like a Filmmaker: Sensory-Rich Worship Design for Unforgettable Messages
Daniel Okrent, The Guarded Gates: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other Europeans Out of America
W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking, Like War: The Weaponization of Social Media
Andy Rooney, My War
John Leith, From Generation to Generation
John Leith, Introduction to the Reformed Faith (2nd read, first read in 1989)
John Leith, The Reformed Imperative (2nd read, first read in 1993)
S. C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson
David Hallerstan, Summer of ‘49
Laura Davenport, Dear Vulcan: Poems
N. T. Wright, Surprised by Scripture
P. M. Formi, The Civility Solution: What to Do when People are Rude
David Foster Wallace, This is Water
Eric Goodman, Cuppy and Stew: The Bombing of Flight 629, A Love Story 
Paul Willis, Rosing from the Dead: Poems
Nancy Koster, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life
Harlan Hanbright, The Idiat and the Odd-yssey
Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire: The Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Dave Moyer, Life and Life Only
Rick Wilson, Running Against the Devil
Michael P. Cohen, Granite and Grace: Seeking the Heart of Yosemite
Alice Outwater, Water: A Natural History
Richard Davids, The Man Who Moved a Mountain
Gary Snyder, Rip Rap and Cold Mountain Poems
Nancy Duante, Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations
Nancy Bevilaqua, The Gospel of the Throw Away Daughter: Poems
David Zucchino, Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy  
James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon B. Johnson: The Passage of Power
Myrlene Hamilton, All I Need to Know About Ministry I Learned from Fly Fishing
Chrys Frey, Tsunami Crimes
David Lee, Mine Tailings: Poems
John Barry, The Great Influenza
Jesse Cole, Find Your Yellow Tux
Ralph Wood, Contending for the Faith: The Church’s Engagement with Culture
Craig Barnes, Diary of a Pastor’s Soul
Tim Conroy, Theologies of Terrain (Poems)  
Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunt
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent
Esau McCaulley,  Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope
Nancy Bevilaqua, A Rough Deliverance: Collected Poems 1863-2013
Aaron McAlexander, Shine on Mayberry Moon
Billy Beasley, The Girl in the River
Alyce McKenzie, Novel Preaching: Tips from Top Writers on Crafting Creative Sermons 
Gary Schmidt, Orbiting Jupiter
Aaron McAlexander, The Last One Leaving Mayberry
Jim Casada, editor, Carolina Christmas: Archibald Rutledge Enduring Holiday Tales

Gary D. Schmidt, Orbiting Jupiter 

(Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015), 183 pages. 

This young adult novel is about Joseph. A teenage father, he’s sent to a foster family who own a farm in rural Maine.

The family has one other boy, Jack. After getting off to a shaky start, the two become like brothers, watching out for the other. The story centers around what happened to Joseph in his past. When he was 13, he fell in love with Madeline. While Joseph was from a broken family that economically lived on the margin, Madeline’s family was well off. When she became pregnant, they sent her away where she gave birth to a daughter she named “Jupiter.” The planet plays a prominent role in the story as Joseph had pointed it out to Madeline and he often looks for it in the sky. The story’s conclusion occurs around Joseph attempt to find his daughter.

Upon Joseph’s release from Stone Mountain, a juvenile detention center, he find himself with chores to do on a farm. He works beside Jack and makes friends with Dahalia, one of the orneriest cows in the barn. Thereafter, he’s the one who milks her. At school, he struggles with some teachers who think he shouldn’t be in school, but others see promise in him. Joseph is exceptionally strong in math and a prospect for the track team. The story occurs in winter. Schmidt captures the the cold of Maine. When milking, the boys lean in on the cows to capture their warmth.The frozen landscape makes the river dangerous, but also creates an opportunity to ice skate on the family’s pond.

Christmas is especially meaningful for Joseph as he attends church with the family and learns about Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father. He also learns of Mary’s early age. While Schmidt doesn’t mention it, it’s traditionally assumed the Virgin Mary was 14 when she gave birth. This is Madeline’s age when she gives birth to Jupiter. I won’t spoil the ending. However, this book is sad, and I found tears in my eyes. Yet, there’s hope in the child, Jupiter. 

Alyce McKenzie, Novel Preaching: Tips from Top Writers on Crafting Creative Sermons

(Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), 180 pages. 

As a “working preacher” who has also taught homiletics on a graduate level, I try to read at least one book a year on the craft, along with another book on writing. This year I chose this book, written by a professor of homiletics at Perkins School of Theology, a Methodist seminary in Texas. 

Writer’s Conference

This book is divided into three parts. The first two deal with the practice of preaching, where the author attempts to provide the information in a creative manner. In the first part (which is what I thought the book was about from its title), she images being at the Breadloaf Writer’s Conference. Taking her readers along with her, we go from conversation to conversation with fiction authors. As we overhear their discussions, we gain insight into how preachers might us some of the tools of authors to engage his or her congregations in their sermons. We learn about noticing and being aware of what’s important in the text and in our sermons. McKenzie draws from a number of authors including Annie Dillard, Natalie Goldberg, Frederick Buechner, Stephen King, Isabelle Allende, Toni Morris. We gain insight into character, plot, and shape along with picking up ideas of how to journal and to capture such insights into the human condition. 

A Cooking Show

The second part of the book involves a cooking show. Here, she draws from well-known (and some not so well known, at least not for me) professors and writers of homiletics.  Each one teaches how they approach a sermon, and the reader gets to pick up a recipe card at the end of their presentation. By the time I got to this part of the book, I was a little over with the cuteness of McKenzie’s writings. The writer’s conference wasn’t quite as overblown as this imaginary journey through some kind of convention with all kinds of “chefs,” a few of whom I’ve met, many of whom I’ve read and heard lecture. Those I knew before reading this book include Charles Rice, Fred Craddock, Tom Long, David Buttrick, Richard Eslinger, Henry Mitchell, Paul Scott Wilson, Nora Tubbs Tisdale, Justo Gonzalez, Eugene Lowry and Mike Graves. To her credit, McKenzie draws from across Western Cultures including African American, Korean American, men and women, Protestants and one Catholic example. 

Best part of the book–Sermons

I found myself wondering about those not included: Tex Sample (who focuses on the language of the working class), Cornelius Plantinga, Jr (who has written about preaching and literature long before this book’s release), Robert Smith, Jr (an African American who has strong grasp of doctrinal preaching), and Haddon Robinson. The latter really surprised me as his Biblical Preaching may be one of the most popular books on preaching and is the “bible” of expository preaching.  

The final section of the book was my favorite. The section consists of a number of creative sermons written by McKenzie. Who’d ever think of angels as UPS workers (after all, angels deliver messages from God which ties into the packages delivered by a UPS driver. I’ll come back to these sermons, I’m sure. McKenzie is able to touch on her audiences fear and concerns and offer a helpful word of reassurance from scripture. I would have preferred to have read more sermons and less of her “tidbits” of information from authors and homiletic professors. 

Caroline Christmas: Archibald Rutledge’s Enduring Holiday Stories

edited by Jim Casada (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 225 pages. 

Archibald Rutledge was the poet laureate of South Carolina for decades. He was a well-known poet and author writing about nature and hunting during the first half of the 20^th Century. Having read several of his works beforehand, I waited till a week before Christmas to read his collection of “Christmas stories.” This book was a gift from my staff in Georgia. 

While the book is filled with Rutledge stories, Jim Casada selected the stories included within the collection. Casada also provides insight into when the selection was written, the circumstances around the story, and where it had previously been published. Many of these stories have been published multiple times. First, in magazines (especially Field and Stream, Outlook, and Outdoor Life), and later in collections published by Rutledge. 

The book is divided up into six parts. The first section all deals with Christmas stories at Hampton Plantation. Rutledge spent thirty years teaching at Middlebury Academy in Pennsylvania. During these decades, he would always come home for Christmas. In one story, he writes about catching a train during a blizzard up north and arriving on the Atlantic Coast Line early the next morning in the sunny South. His brother meets him at the train station in Charleston and two hours later they’re hunting. Such descriptions brought back memories of me, as a young seminary student, catching a train from Pittsburgh during a snowstorm, heading south to visit my sister the week before Christmas in Florida. When the train arrived in Savannah early in the morning, wearing shorts, I went for a walk along the platform. 

A Natural Christmas

The second part of the book, titled “A Natural Christmas,” has selections where Rutledge describes walking in the forest and fields of coastal South Carolina during the Christmas break. Known as a hunter, we are provided a glimpse of Rutledge’s vast knowledge of wildlife, especially birds. While most of these stories are about watching birds, he mentions dove hunting. During such a hunt, in 1896, he shot a bird twice the size of the others. It turned out to be a passenger pigeon. Before Rutledge’s time, these birds flew in vast numbers that would darken the sky. But even by the time Rutledge came along, they were rarely seen. This story was published in 1911. That was just three years before the last of passenger pigeon died in a Cincinnati zoo. I find it interesting the world Rutledge describes had not yet been impacted by chemicals like DDT. Such chemicals have been destructive to birdlife. Reading his prose is to be taken back to a more primeval world. 

Deer Hunting

Deer hunting is the focus of the third part of the book. Such hunting on the coastal plain is done with shotguns. In telling the dangers of using rifles in such flat terrain, he draws on a familiar form of transportation of his day. “Express bulletins don’t make no local stops,” he humorously notes. Around Hamilton, deer hunting was also done with dogs who would chase the deer out of the bays and swamps. While I never hunted with dogs, I did go a few times with my father. I was not yet old enough to carry a gun. We were stationed along a remote road. We froze while waiting and listening for the dogs to drive the deer out way. While my dad did shoot several deer, he never did when he had my brother and me in tow. Again, these stories are filled with wisdom and insight into hunting. My favorite of his deer hunting stories was the last. In this story, he prepared to take his son hunting when he returned from Europe after World War Two. 

Other Game

There is a small section of stories about hunting other wild game, especially turkey and quail. He mentions squirrel, rabbit, duck, and ‘coon hunting, but his stories are mainly limited to deer, quail and turkey. There is also a very short selection of seasonal poems. Casada feels his poetry hasn’t “aged” as well as his prose. One of the three poems, “Christmas Eve on the Rapidan (1863)” was set om the Civil War. Rutledge’s father was one of the youngest colonel’s in the Confederate army. The last section of the book has a number of recipes. 

Rutledge is a master at describing the land in which he’s hunting and the “chase” of the deer. His stories often contain humor, and the hunter doesn’t always come away with dinner. On one occasion he notes that after a week, they were still eating pork. In another story, he writes about a turkey hunter who followed a bird into a tree. Moving closer on Christmas Eve, as the light drained from the sky, he saw two dark figures in a tree. Not able to determine which was the bird and which was a clump of mistletoe, he fired and guessed wrong. The bird flew as a chunk of mistletoe fell to the ground. He picked it up to carry home for decoration. I also remember shooting mistletoe from a tree. It was an easy way to harvest the seasonal green, however the white berries often don’t survive the fall.

Rutledge and African Americans

 These stories are dated by Rutledge use of the term Negro for African Americans. While they were no longer slaves, they were still bound to the land and held a subservient role. During deer hunts, white hunters were stationed around a swamp or bay, while African American men led the chase. Using dogs, they’d go into the swamps to flush out the deer. One has to remember that Rutledge is writing from another age. While he often speaks highly of African Americans as a race, especially his childhood friend Prince, there is a separation. He lived in the big house and they lived in the shacks around the plantation. These stories were all written in the first half of the last century. At the time, long before the Civil Rights Movement, Rutledge saw no problems with such relationship. Anyone reading this book today needs to understand time has changed and realize Rutledge was blind to such injustices. 

Aaron McAlexander, The Last One to Leave Mayberry

(Stonebridge Press, 2011), 219 pages, a few b&w photos.  

McAlexander’s family is from Mayberry even though he grew up in Meadows of Dan, which is located three miles north of Mayberry. In this book, he along with others from his family tell of their ancestor’s moving to this hardscrabble mountain terrain.

Today, there’s not much in Mayberry. There’s the church and there’s the store. Even in the good old days, there wasn’t much to Mayberry. The store also had a Post Office, but that closed in the 30s. There was a tannery and a number of diaries along with a school. Although the community is sparse, it created many good memories that McAlexander mines to create this collection of short stories. 

If you read this book, you’ll learn about trout fishing, the first telephone in the community, and the depression (that Mayberry seemed to experience long before the rest of the country). There are stories about men going off to World War 2 and a training flight over the mountains that crashed in the dark hours of morning in 1945. You’ll learn about a “suck-egg dog” (beside being a nasty term for one’s enemies). You’ll learn of the influence of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which divided farms, and about a blacksmith who became a Presbyterian preacher, who occupied the pulpit I currently attempt to fill. You’ll learn of mysteries that still remain mysterious. You’ll read about people who make a break for the West, only to come back home. McAlexander himself headed off as a physics professor, but upon retirement maintains a cottage in the community in which so many of his relatives reside (many of whom are below ground).  This is a delightful book with good stories.