MOTHER, NATURE

A gay author tells the story of an unforgettable cross-country road trip with his conservative Christian mother.

As he neared 40, Jenkins, the author of To Shake the Sleeping Self and Like Streams to the Ocean, came to a sobering realization: His devoutly Baptist mother, a “timeless force of nature,” would one day die. Wanting to spend as much time as possible with her, he overrode the “claustrophobia” of her narrow-mindedness by bringing a friend along on a trip to Europe. Later, his mother proposed a Glenn Beck cruise which Jenkins accepted only because the trip would allow him to become “a voyeur [and] social anthropologist” among the conservatives he imagined would be his fellow travelers. When the pandemic cancelled the cruise, the pair decided on a road trip that would retrace his mother and father’s “walk across America” during the late 1970s. “From 1976 to 1979,” writes Jenkins, “my mom and dad walked 2,600 miles from Louisiana to the Oregon Coast.” Navigating roads that would take them through the South, the Rockies and on to the West Coast, mother and son also navigated the complexities of a deeply affectionate relationship fractured by their respective belief systems. The author had left Nashville for Los Angeles to explore the sexuality that his conservative Christian mother—a woman who also believed colloidal silver, rather than medical science, cured all ills, including Covid-19—could not accept. In 20 years away from her, his fondest wish to be married had not manifested because of “decades of unpacking,” and his mother’s prayers for sexual “healing” had intervened. Though the author and his mother never managed to reconcile their differences, what makes this heartfelt, often funny book so rewarding is the portrait Jenkins offers of two people still willing to accept the challenge of loving each other despite clashing beliefs.

Engaging reading for divided times.