THERE IS LIFE AFTER TRAGEDY

Blogger Kellogg chronicles the terrible tragedies that befell her and her family and the Christian faith that stewarded her through troubled times in this memoir.

In rural Texas, 1946, the author’s uncle, Leo Bode, a 35-year-old man struggling with mental illness, committed an astonishingly macabre act: He shot his mother, Ethel, and father, Oscar, to death, and then turned the gun on himself. The author’s remaining family did not speak of the trauma that this inexplicable occurrence inflicted on the family, and the author grew up believing Ethel, Oscar, and Leo had died in an automobile accident. Years later, in the 2010s, she learned the bare bones of the story from a family member and turned to her cousins to help her investigate the rest. The author powerfully describes the nature of tragedy: “Tragedy is never on anyone’s calendar. It is never convenient. It never asks for permission to invade our lives. There is no forewarning, no safety drill, no sirens blaring, and no chance to prepare. It simply happens at will.” Kellogg candidly discusses the challenging aftermath of her discoveries and the manner in which she turned to her spiritual faith for consolation in the midst of despair. She counsels that only grace, “God’s unmerited favor,” can counter the “deadening effects of tragedy” and concludes that God “masterfully uses the results of tragedies for eternal value” in a way that might seem incomprehensible to us at the time. The author devotes far too much space to a general family history, providing genealogies for four different branches of the family and several individual profiles, which diminishes the story’s universal resonance. However, Kellogg’s book is bracing and thoughtful; she avoids platitudes and self-soothing reductions. With an impressive combination of subtle intelligence and moral courage, she accepts the extraordinary challenges of life and limns a lucid defense of Christianity as a response to life’s trials. This is an unusually moving book, unflinching and honest.

An affecting account of the power of Christian faith to reckon with personal tragedy.