Tag: religion

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

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My horrified fascination with cults and high-control religious groups began early in my adult life and continues to this day. Name a memoir written by a survivor of religious trauma and/or abuse and the odds are good that I’ve read it. So when I learned that Tia Levings, an incredibly brave woman whose story featured heavily throughout the Amazon Prime documentary Shiny Happy People, was coming out with a book, I smashed that want-to-read button on Goodreads so quickly and so hard, I’m surprised my phone screen didn’t shatter. And when that book, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy (St Martin’s Press, 2024), was offered up for review on NetGalley, I went running. I knew this book was going to be incredible.

And I was not disappointed.

But I was shaken. Deeply. It’s that kind of book.

Several times, I had to put my kindle down and take a few deep breaths. Several more times, I had to pull out the tissues, and during one moment, I needed to stop and hug my daughter (still crying, of course). 

Before I get into the meat of this review, please know that while this is an utterly amazing memoir that deserves to be read far and wide, it’s intense. It’s a LOT. It’s probably the heaviest escape memoir I’ve ever read, and I don’t say this lightly, because survivor stories are always heavy with the pain and trauma they’ve suffered at the hands of their cult. That said, Tia Levings’ writing is raw; she doesn’t hold back on walking her readers through her trauma and letting them know that this isn’t just her story. This is the story of a lot of women who have gotten pulled into fundamentalism.

This memoir revolves around themes of abuse (spiritual and religious, physical, emotional, and sexual), Christian fundamentalism, domestic violence, misogyny, Christian patriarchy, fear, shame, fear of hell and loss of salvation, female submission, control, isolation, Christian Dominionism, Christian nationalism, Christian domestic discipline, quiverfull theology, ATI and Bill Gothard, Reform and Calvinist theology, repeat pregnancies, rape, painful sexual encounters, severe medical events, death of an infant, grief, diminishment and loss of self, dissociation, and mental illness. Take care of yourself when you read this book. It’s incredible the entire way through, but even if you’re not a survivor of religious abuse and trauma like Ms. Levings, there are potentially triggering topics on every page. Survivors will see a reflection of the nightmares they lived through; non-survivors will be shocked and appalled at the devastation wreaked upon women and children in the name of God. 

It was a family move to Florida, followed by her family’s eventual involvement with a Baptist megachurch, that set Tia Levings down a twisted path of Christian fundamentalism, patriarchy, and female submission. Due to a combination of heavy church influence and lack of family finances, Tia walked away from the idea of college (too worldly for Christian girls like her, anyway) and instead waited for God to send her a husband. And a husband was indeed sent – though by whom, I’m not sure – in the form of Allan, a Christian Air Force veteran who began abusing Tia even before they became engaged. But with the ideas of female submission and forgiveness firmly planted in Tia’s mind, she went along with what she’d been taught and married Allan anyway. It’s what a good Christian girl does.

Her long-anticipated wedding night was terrible, sounding like something straight out of Debi Pearl’s account of her own honeymoon (if you’re not familiar with the story, you can Google it, but I’m warning you, it’s horrific, and beware, because she and her awful husband are still some of the louder voices in this harmful patriarchal movement), and life only spiraled downward from there. “It’s my job to teach you what we believe,” Tia’s husband informed her. Another friend shamed her by telling her, “If you’re feeling personal ambition, Tia, you need to repent and ask Jesus to help you die to yourself.” It’s no wonder that she slowly began to feel like she was vanishing from her own life, using dissociation as a coping mechanism and losing large chunks of time as baby after baby joined their family.

Fundamentalist Christianity uses severe control tactics in order to keep women cowering and keep the men in charge, and this is evident in every sentence of this book. I scrawled down horrifying quote after horrifying quote in my notebook as I paged furiously through my kindle copy: “You disgust me with your opinions and individualism.” “The elders feel that women getting together is dangerous, because of our propensity to stray from spiritual topics into gossip when unattended by a head of household.” And, most chilling and stomach-turning of all, this quote, uttered by the husband of the woman in question: “Well, it’s time we should be getting home. Mommy’s getting a spanking.” And for context, the mother being referred to here was both pregnant and nursing at the time. And this wasn’t said in jest. This adult woman was going to be forcefully spanked like a child, as punishment, by her husband, upon returning to their house. This is an aspect of fundamentalism that Ms. Levings experienced as well. I nearly lost my lunch while reading the scenes that dealt with Christian domestic discipline.

Tia and her children eventually do make it out, but only barely, and the long-term effects ripple on today. Her story is told in such a way that you can feel her isolation, the mind-numbing boringness of it all, her desperation to give her kids the best life possible in the midst of all of this, her desire for more. And yet, her survival tactics of denial and downplaying make complete sense in the context of her religious indoctrination; this memoir is the best I’ve ever read at explaining the hows and whys of indoctrination and its effect on decision-making and survival. 

This book is going to make some waves. Not just among survivor communities, but also among the general public. Because at the heart of it, this book, along with Tia Levings’ vibrant social media presence, serves as a warning: THIS is how Christian fundamentalists and nationalists want us all to live. All the abuse, the pain, the isolation that she suffered, this is the reality that people on the far right are trying to craft for everyone in the country. Learn it, recognize it, and join the fight against it. 

If I could give this book more than five stars, I would. This is one of those books that I think no amount of words could ever do justice to in a review. It’s powerful, it’s masterful, it will shake you to your very core. Read this, but take care of yourself while you do. It’s not an easy read. Read it, then tell everyone you know about it so that they read it too, and are aware of how devastating patriarchal fundamentalist Christianity can be.

If you’re a survivor of religious trauma and/or spiritual abuse and are in need of support, please visit The Vashti Initiative. We’re here for you.

Huge thanks to NetGalley, Tia Levings, and St Martin’s Press for providing me with an early copy for review.

A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy will be available on August 6th, 2024. Support your local bookstores!

Visit Tia Levings’ website here.

Follow her on Instagram here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Original Sins: An Extraordinary Memoir of Faith, Family, Shame, and Addiction by Matt Rowland Hill

Stephanie1 Comment

I love a good leaving-religion-behind memoir, so that’s how Original Sins: An Extraordinary Memoir of Faith, Family, Shame, and Addiction by Matt Rowland Hill (Vintage Digital, 2022) ended up on my TBR, and I grabbed it on my last run to the library before it closed to move to its new home. And whew, friends. This isn’t your typical “This religion wasn’t for me so I left and it was difficult” memoir. Original Sins is a raw, searing collection of pain that will devastate you, then leave you full of hope.

Welsh-born Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of an evangelical pastor, in a family with three other siblings and parents who fought constantly. Their family dynamic was fraught with conflict, and Matt delved deeply into his religion, desperate to have all the answers. But this wasn’t to be, and later on in life, he turned to drinking, then to drugs to fill in the gaps left behind by a religion he could no longer feel at home in. Falling deeper and deeper into a hole dug by crack and heroin, Matt gets clean and relapses several times while trying to come to terms with the way the world was always explained to him versus the reality of how things are.

This is an astonishingly honest memoir. There were things Mr. Hill wrote about that, as I read, I thought, “You could not torture this out of me!” but that ended up being important to the story later (which really made me admire his courage). His struggles are immense; his descriptions of drug use, cravings, withdrawal, and the many unethical things he did to score his next hit made me ache for him, so great was his pain and the mental anguish he was running from. Addiction is an utter monster, and Mr. Hill never holds back in letting the reader know the realities of living with such a condition. My heart broke over and over as I turned the pages.

This is such a fascinating look at the consequences of…life, really. Mr. Hill’s parents were extremely flawed; they were raising their children in the way they considered right, but obviously, religion of all sorts is never, ever a one-size-fits-all thing. The damage it can do can be massive, as can not dealing with that damage – and if we’re not given the tools to deal, or we’re told it’s wrong to confront our feelings or even to HAVE those feelings…we end up with stories like Mr. Hill’s, full of pain, suffering, and a long, long road back, one that not everyone is able to travel.

Original Sins is vibrating with pain, but it’s raw and brutally honest, and it’s an incredible piece of writing. I wish Mr. Hill all the best in the world for his continued recovery and journey towards finding peace with and in himself, and with the world. 

Follow Matt Rowland Hill on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult by Michelle Dowd

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Browsing through NetGalley a while back, I found a book that basically had my name on it in flashing neon signs. It combined multiple interests of mine, and though it took a while, I was finally approved, and I was thrilled. Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult by Michelle Dowd (Algonquin Books, 2023) called my name from the moment I read the title, and I was correct: this book was a deeply engaging read, mining into a childhood filled with chaos, dystopian theology, and a love of nature that has remained with its author through her escape from the cult that created her.

Michelle Dowd was raised in California in her grandfather’s group known as The Field (which still exists today, but, under different leadership, is drastically different from the group in which Ms. Dowd grew up). The end of the world was nigh; group members would need to learn how to survive in the coming apocalypse, so Michelle, who received only three years of education at a public school, learned early on how to live off of what the earth could provide. Pine nuts, roots, berries, leaves, needles, bark, Michelle learned how to use them all. This education was the only form of affection her mother gave her; The Field taught that any kind of affection was wrong and unnecessary, and thus Michelle grows up starved for love, attention, food, and education, though her obvious intelligence is never in question.

An autoimmune disorder hospitalizes Michelle for months at a time; The Field states it’s because she’s an unfaithful Jezebel, her father never visits, and her mother blames her, with helpful statements such as, “Why are you doing this to me?” Throughout all of the chaos of her childhood – the physical and sexual abuse, the educational neglect, the lack of affection, the malnutrition, the illness, the anorexia and self-harm, the poverty, the persistent terror of eschatological theology preached by all the adults in her life – nature is her one constant, and it carries Michelle through to her eventual escape into the world she’d been made to fear her entire life.

Forager is a beautifully written memoir, and turning such suffering and fear into beauty is no easy task. It’s Educated-meets-I Want to Be Left Behind, and it’s utterly stunning in not just the depths of depravity in which Ms. Dowd was raised, but the constant unfolding knowledge of how far she had to climb to escape, a process not fully detailed (dare I hope for a second memoir from Ms. Dowd?), but one alluded to have taken years. Deconstruction and rebuilding is a difficult process and one that must’ve been especially challenging for a person raised in The Field. This book left me stunned, grateful for Ms. Dowd’s survival, and deeply concerned for other members – current and former – of this group.  

Interspersed between the chapters are field notes on different plants that provide a little insight into the knowledge of the nature around her that Ms. Dowd absorbed as a child. The pictures she paints of the plants and trees that helped her survive and the way she describes the comfort she finds in nature and her ability to navigate it temper the intense descriptions of abuse, neglect, and apathy she grew up with. Like most memoirs that deal with heavy abuse, Forager can be tough to read at times, but ultimately, it’s well-balanced and will leave readers in awe of the strength it takes to survive a childhood like this one. 

Huge thanks to NetGalley, Algonquin Books, and Michelle Dowd for allowing me to read and review an early copy. Forager is available for purchase March 7, 2023. 

Visit Michelle Dowd’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Lovingly Abused: A True Story of Overcoming Cults, Gaslighting, and Legal Educational Neglect by Heather Grace Heath

Stephanie1 Comment

One of the podcasts I’ve been making my way through, usually when I cross-stitch or exercise, is Leaving Eden, which tells the story of Sadie Carpenter’s life in and exit from the IFB (Independent Fundamental Baptist) cult. I fired it up a few weeks ago and listened to an episode that featured Heather Grace Heath, known on TikTok as @backsliddenharlot. She came out of IBLP (the Institute in Basic Life Principles) and ATI (Advanced Training Institute), an offshoot of the IFB that you may be familiar with due to the fact that the Duggar family also belongs to this cult, and she wrote a book, Lovingly Abused: A True Story of Overcoming Cults, Gaslighting, and Legal Educational Neglect (Kindle, 2021), that was on my TBR. I did a quick search, found a library in the state had a copy, and requested it via Interlibrary Loan. A few days later, I picked it up and started reading.

Trigger warnings for physical and sexual abuse, incest, and religious abuse.

Heather’s family didn’t join ATI until she was a little older (she wasn’t *quite* born into it), but her parents were a perfect target for this predatory group. Abuse ran rampant on both sides, and her mother’s anxiety made homeschooling seem like the perfect solution to never letting Heather out of her sight. The “education” Heather gets from Bill Gothard’s Wisdom booklets is horrifyingly inadequate, from its misinformation on just about everything, to its lack of information on things children actually need to know, to its inappropriateness in so many ways, straight to its charts on all the ways victims of rape and sexual abuse are at fault for the crimes perpetrated against them. (And remember, these are all-age booklets. You’re supposed to teach these to your six-year-old sitting right next to your fifteen-year-old.) Not only did this leave Heather with massive educational gaps, it gifted her massive anxiety, fear, and terror. 

The many kinds of abuse Heather suffers turns into trauma, which follows her as she grows, but becoming an EMT serves as an outlet for her stress, and through this, she learns more about the world outside the cult and that it’s nowhere near as terrible as she’s been taught. Slowly, slowly, she makes her way out and begins to shed the years of misinformation fed to her by ATI and Bill Gothard, and becomes someone who helps to shine a light on this dangerous group. 

Fascinating book. While the writing isn’t as polished as you would expect a traditionally published book to be, the information inside is incredibly valuable. Heather is throwing the curtains back on the severe educational neglect perpetrated by these Christian homeschool cults (and yes, she did know the Duggars and mentions them a few times). These cults and ATI in particular promotes sheltering your children from the world as a feature (making it all the much more difficult for them to leave this cult, because their lack of knowledge about the outside world is close to zero), and the lack of actual education Heather describes is nothing short of grotesque. Her book is a plea for more regulation of homeschooling so that no other child suffers the same legal educational neglect her parents foisted upon her (while thinking they were doing the right thing). High five to her for mentioning The Vashti Initiative, the nonprofit I do volunteer work for!

Phew. This book is a lot, but I’m so proud of Heather for writing it and for putting it out there in the world. It’s an absolute force that I think will be so incredibly helpful to other survivors.

Visit Heather Grace Heath’s website here.

Check out her TikTok here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young

Stephanie1 Comment

A recent trip to the library had me frustrated that so many of the books I wanted were checked out (solely because I’m trying to get through a reading challenge here, people! Otherwise, read on with your bad selves), so as I was examining the new books shelves, wondering if a few of the selections from my list were maybe there, I ran across a book NOT in the reading challenge, but still on my TBR: Uncultured: A Memoir by Daniella Mestyanek Young (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). This was one I was really looking forward to, so reading challenge be damned! I snatched that book up and started reading the next day.

Trigger warnings: sexual abuse and rape of minors and adults, physical abuse, military situations and death

Daniella grew up in the cult known as Children of God and known these days as The Family International. What this cult amounted to was a Christian group dedicated to child rape, with its members taught to share God’s love through sex, and that this was okay, normal, and behavior desirable to God. Daniella, whose own mother gave birth to her at 14, grew up suffering extreme physical and sexual abuse in the name of God. Her intelligence and drive for education (piecemeal at best in the cult) keep her going, and by the age of fifteen, she’s had enough. Daniella is able to leave and live in the United States with a sibling she doesn’t know well, and live life on her own terms.

But life on the outside after having grown up in such a closed-off, high control group, isn’t simple or easy, and after college, she finds herself in the clutches of another high control group: the US Army. Just like the cult, Daniella’s every action is controlled. Her time, her thoughts, her opinions, her activities, every part of her life is someone else’s decision. She’s able to thrive there, but the similarities between the cult and the Army become too much later on, and just like the cult, the Army is easily able to throw her under the bus without a second thought.

Whew. This is an intense read. I’d never thought of the military and cults as using similar control tactics, but this is a comparison that makes absolute sense, and as a former military wife, I’m kind of shocked at myself that I never made this connection before. It also makes sense as to how so many people from strict-ER forms of Christianity wind up in the military (I say strict-ER because the super high control groups like IFB and IBLP, for example, don’t seem to have any kind of tradition of encouraging military service among their members, something that many of the discussion groups I participate in online have noticed). At the time that she joined, Daniella thought that the Army was what she wanted; though she does incredibly well for quite some time, it ends up not being the home she’d been looking for.

Her descriptions of always feeling like an outsider, of being a third culture kid and never quite fitting in anywhere, are nearly as devastating as the descriptions of the PTSD and physical symptoms she suffers from after years of physical, sexual, and emotional torture. Her innate strength is what carries her through; she comes close to ending it several times, and my heart broke over and over again while reading this book.

There’s maybe a little more in here about Ms. Young’s time in the Army than there is about growing up in a cult, but the striking similarities between the two groups, and how her abuse and exploitation continued while serving, will keep you turning pages. Being in the military is tough; being a woman in the military and serving combat missions is even tougher, for many reasons, and seeing how her childhood parallels to the treatment she received while serving is…unsettling at best.

This is an eye-opening book, and one that will leave you shaking your head and pondering a lot of the questions Ms. Young has raised.

Visit Daniella Mestyanek Young’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

memoir · nonfiction

Book Review: Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna

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Cults and high-control religious groups are a longtime fascination of mine, and there are definite factions of evangelical Christianity that fall into this group (someone I attended high school with has fallen into one of these groups, unfortunately. It might actually be more than one; I’m not sure which group the second person affiliates with). I end up reading everything I can about these groups, and it was digging through a list of these books that I discovered Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God by Amber Cantorna (Fortress Press, 2017).

Amber Cantorna grew up the daughter of one of Focus on the Family’s top employees; her father worked for Focus almost his entire career. If you’re not familiar with this organization, it’s an evangelical Christian organization that guides families using a strict evangelical interpretation of the Bible. Amber was homeschooled, she grew up steeped in purity culture, and she knew her future would be one of marriage and motherhood, because that was the only acceptable future for a Christian girl. But as Amber grew, things didn’t quite fit in place the way Focus on the Family demanded them to, and she was left feeling…out of place. Not quite right.

It wasn’t until her early adulthood that Amber realized she was a lesbian. Coming out to her parents took a lot of courage, work, and help from her therapist, and it still couldn’t have gone worse. Her parents ended up cutting off contact. They weren’t there at her wedding, and as of the writing of the book, it seems as though they no longer speak to her.

It’s painful still, but Amber has managed to salvage her faith and grow into the person she was meant to become, with her wife at her side. She writes books and speaks to groups about living as a gay Christian and the importance of inclusion. Despite being abandoned by the family who once told her they would always be there for her, she’s managed to craft a beautiful life for herself. Living well truly is the best revenge.

Tough read in terms of story, but it’s ultimately one of triumph. I’m glad Ms. Cantorna has turned her pain into support for others, and I hope all the people who need to hear her story will find their way to this book.

Visit Amber Cantorna’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction · YA

Book Review: The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum

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Woohoo, Jewish books! Always looking to add them to my list, and I was super excited to learn about the existence of The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum (Philomel Books, 2022). There aren’t a ton of YA books set in an Orthodox community (I do manage to find some from time to time!), so this one particularly excited me.

Yehuda ‘Hoodie’ Rosen’s Orthodox community recently moved from its mostly-Jewish area to a smaller, non-Jewish area, and everyone is feeling the strain of being the new folks in town who don’t fit in (no thanks to the longtime residents who don’t exactly roll out the welcome mat). He’s a bit of a slacker at school, kind of laid-back, but things start to change in his life when he meets Anna-Marie, the daughter of the mayor. Hoodie starts to fall for her, despite her not being Jewish (really, he shouldn’t be talking to her at all, as per community norms…), and when his family finds out, Hoodie is in t.r.o.u.b.l.e.

But things aren’t going well for his community. There’s antisemitic graffiti. Nasty comments. Violence. Hoodie’s just trying to reach out, form some bonds, make things better, right? It doesn’t much matter; Hoodie’s definitely on the outs for spending time with not just an outsider, but a girl. And then the shooting happens.

This is a fabulous look into a world most of us don’t get to see. If you’re not Jewish, there may be a term or a concept here and there that’s unfamiliar; in that case, Google is your friend (understanding these things really does add depth to the story, and hey, learning is always good, so don’t miss out! And feel free to ask me in the comments if you read this and need help with anything. I’m always happy to help!). Hoodie’s world may seem a little small, but it’s really not; it’s rich with family, friends, community, learning. It may not always be the best fit for everyone, and some people may struggle a bit (and this is illustrated in the story in gentle ways), but I really appreciated Mr. Blum’s fair look at this particular community.

Hoodie’s attraction to Anna-Marie is a little heart-breaking, at least it was from my adult perspective. It’s doomed from the start, and Anna-Marie has an entirely different mindset from him, along with a streak of…I don’t want to say cruelty, maybe indifference, that shows up later on. Both characters have some growing up to do – entirely understandable, as they’re both teenagers – so they struggle to navigate their differences and places in the world, and Anna-Marie’s reasons for getting to know Hoodie in the first place aren’t exactly noble. But the violence wrought upon the community changes everything, and Mr. Blum does a phenomenal job at handling this. Truly fantastic writing in the final quarter of the book.

I really enjoyed this. The characters are complex and well-crafted, each one a distinct personality; the Orthodox community is portrayed wonderfully and fairly, and the novel as a whole works really well. For a debut novel, this is amazing, and I’m seriously looking forward to reading everything Isaac Blum writes in the future.

Visit Isaac Blum’s website here.

Follow him on Twitter here.

fiction

Book Review: Girl A by Abigail Dean

StephanieLeave a comment

I somehow missed the nightmare Turpin case when it broke, but I’ve followed it ever since I learned about it (my God. Those poor kids). So when I learned about Girl A by Abigail Dean (Viking, 2021), a novel that seemed like a fictionalized account of the Turpin story, set in Great Britain, it went onto my list. It took for-ev-er for this to actually be in at the library, however; seems as though everyone in my town is just as horrified by that story as I am.

Girl A is Alexandra, or Lex, the eldest daughter and second eldest child of the Gracie family, where eight children were discovered, chained and emaciated, living in unbelievable filth. She’s the one who escaped, who dropped from a second-story window and broke her leg in the process, but who saved her other siblings. Her father poisoned himself before the police showed up, and Mom went to prison; now, at the beginning of the story, Lex is an adult, a lawyer, traveling back to England from New York City, to deal with her mother’s death.

The story jumps back and forth in time, from what happened leading up to the dramatic rescue of the Gracie children, to how growing up in such terrible conditions affected the children as adults. Some have fared better than others; no one has made it out unscathed.

This is a hard book to describe. None of the adult Gracie children are particularly likeable; some of them are a bit frightening in their ability to manipulate. Several are just tragic. It’s hard to get a full read on Lex, since she’s so damaged and deals with that damage by drinking a lot. A revelation later on in the book had me questioning pretty much everything about her, and the murky conclusion didn’t help matters at all.

I enjoyed the storytelling of this novel, but I wish there had been more concrete conclusions, and that it had felt more solid as a whole. If you’ve read this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Visit Abigail Dean’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

fiction

Book Review: God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney

Stephanie1 Comment

I can’t remember where I learned about God Spare the Girls by Kelsey McKinney (William Morrow, 2021), but the premise intrigued me immediately. I’m fascinated by religion, and even fiction with religious twists or drama is enough to pull me in. Usually I swing more towards cults or cult-like settings, but I’m not picky; I’ll take average, everyday religious drama!

Abigail and Caroline are daughters of a famous megachurch pastor, Luke Nolan, who rose to fame years ago after a sermon on purity went viral. Now, Abigail is getting married, Caroline is about to head off to college, and it’s come to light that Luke has been having an affair for over a year. This is major news, bound to affect everyone affiliated with The Hope, Luke’s church, and Abigail and Caroline are directly in the path of the fallout.

Taking refuge at the ranch they inherited from their deceased grandmother, the sisters grow close for the first time as they spend their days trying to understand what happened, how they got here, what exactly growing up with Luke Nolan as a father has done to both of them. More secrets are revealed, and Caroline’s desperation increases as the summer nears an end and Abigail’s wedding inches closer.

I really wanted to love this book, and it was okay. Luke Nolan obviously has some major skeletons in the closet, and both he and his wife, Abigail and Caroline’s mother, were extremely well-written and true to character, easily recognizable if you have even the slightest bit of knowledge or interest in what American evangelical megachurches have looked like over the past twenty or thirty years. Luke is the narcissistic pastor determined to remain in the limelight; his wife, ever-adoring, keeps a smile plastered on her face at all times, despite what it costs her.

Abigail is the quintessential eldest daughter, solid, hard-working, always keeping up appearances like she’s learned from her mother. Caroline, the younger, more forgotten child, has space to wonder, to question, to doubt, and to forge her own path; no one is as dependent on her as they are on Abigail, which is both good and hurtful.

The characters were all well-developed; the plot, or lack thereof at times, was where the book lost me a bit. Drama would build up, and then…nothing. Not much of anything would happen. Any kind of action was sacrificed on the altar of Caroline’s (the narrator’s) inner turmoil (which is likely true to real life, but in fiction, I expect a little more action, you know?). I kept waiting for more things to happen to advance the plot forward, for the realizations the daughters came to to move things along, but it never really happened, and at least one of the daughters is arguably worse off at the end than at the beginning. Not much at all changes, and that just kind of left me feeling flat and uninspired at the end. I didn’t fully dislike this one; I just felt as though it lacked any real purpose at its conclusion. Interesting, yes, but it didn’t follow through enough on its initial promise of drama for me.

Visit Kelsey McKinney’s website here.

Follow her on Twitter here.

nonfiction

Book Review: Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman

Stephanie1 Comment

I can’t actually remember how Stolen Words: The Nazi Plunder of Jewish Books by Mark Glickman (The Jewish Publication Society, 2015) ended up on my TBR; likely a mention by one of the many Jewish pages I follow on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Books and reading have always been an important part of being Jewish (we are the People of the Book!), and so learning about and understanding what happened to Jewish books during and after World War II was something that piqued my interest. Boy, did I learn a LOT from this book!

So, almost everyone knows that the Nazi burned books. Most of us have seen pictures of people throwing books onto a huge bonfire, and we use Nazi book burning as a metaphor for the dangers of censorship. But most of us probably don’t know that their book burning phase didn’t last very long; they quickly moved on to collecting books. That’s right. The Nazis stole, then collected Jewish writings even as they mowed down the Jewish people during World War II. They planned to study the writings of the culture they had wiped out. Fortunately, they lost, and afterwards, one of the many questions to be answered at war’s end became, “Now what do we do with all these millions of books?”

In order to help the reader understand the importance of this question, Rabbi Mark Glickman begins the book with a fascinating look at the history of Jewish texts and the emphasis on reading and study that has always been central to Judaism. The second section segues into the many heartbreaking ways the Nazis stole and desecrated our texts; the third, how so many people worked for years to return said texts to their rightful owners, or, barring the ability to do that, to send the texts to the places they would again be loved and cherished. This was obviously a massive amount of work; millions upon millions of books and papers had been stolen and hidden away, or stored in places that ranged from caves to castles. Moving these books involved multiple organizations working tirelessly for years.

This is an incredible book that tells a story I hadn’t heard before. I had no idea about the Nazis stealing books; even with all the reading I’ve done about history, World War II, and the Shoah, I had been under the impression that they burned books and nothing else. I had no clue about the massive troves of Jewish literature that lay hidden after the war, nor of the incredible effort of so many people to return these books to communities and organizations that would recognize them for the treasures that they are. This book presented a brand-new understanding of history to me, and I’m grateful to Rabbi Glickman for having penned such an interested, eye-opening work. I always appreciate being able to be better informed about anything, but especially Judaism and Jewish history.