An intermittently rambling book that may nevertheless serve as a potent source of inspiration for the spiritually and...
A slight memoir detailing one soul-searching woman’s rekindling of her religious faith.
Nebraska-based freelance writer, blogger and columnist DeRusha tracks her incremental estrangement from religion to a time when, as a child, she stole a necklace from a classmate then, wracked with guilt, believed she would be “bound for the unquenchable fires of hell.” An obsession with her own premature death and failure to establish a meaningful connection with God distanced her further, even as her father, a high school guidance counselor with his own complex relationship with faith, offered little solace. As the author aged, the increasingly dense fog of her spiritual deficiency manifested in the defeatist notion of “God” as an unapproachable manifestation. In college, she attended Mass simply to scope out potential dating partners. Things changed after she met and married Lutheran Minnesotan Brad in graduate school, was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, relocated to Lincoln and had two sons. Content with motherhood yet yearning for divine direction, she began to reconsider her disbelief in theocracy and found God in the everyday. While there was no rapturous, revelatory event responsible for the restoration of her faith, the narrative represents the author’s return to the Catholic Church—and an enlightenment that, for her, became particularly elusive and hard-won. DeRusha’s newfound communion will resonate with readers plagued with fears, doubts and frustrations in discovering their own spiritual nexuses amid the hustle of contemporary life. There’s lots of domestic household and homiletical filler suffusing the memoir’s second half, however, which has the odd effect of bolstering DeRusha’s overall experience and simultaneously diluting the impact of her divine investment.
An intermittently rambling book that may nevertheless serve as a potent source of inspiration for the spiritually and religiously inclined.Pub Date: April 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60142-532-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Convergent/Crown
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
