As a well-written chronicle of choice between the “success” of big cities and life in the far simpler world of old...
American Conservative senior editor Dreher (The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life, 2013) shares his search for his family’s acceptance, looking for answers from his church, his therapist, and Dante’s Divine Comedy.
The author likens his decision to return with his wife and children to his home in the Louisiana parish of West Feliciana as the return of a prodigal son. Reading Dante, canto by canto, helped him find the way to reconnect. He never took to his father’s traditions of hunting, fishing, and other outdoor activities; the author was bookish and lived in his own world. He left for a career in journalism far from home—New York, Texas, Washington, D.C.—but the visits home, short and cool, are his real story. His conversion to Catholicism and eventually Orthodox Christianity expanded the gulf (“the family has always been Methodist”). Dreher mostly avoids preaching or navel-gazing, but he seems to be butting his head against a wall trying to get his family to change. His description of the death of his sister is poignant, and that event prompted him and his wife to return home to help her children. Though their help was not wanted, it was accepted begrudgingly. His descriptions of Southerners’ deep attachment to the land and family are enlightening, and the author allows readers to see how his family felt he had forsaken them. The stress of homecoming caused chronic illness, and this book is his fight for resolution. A serendipitous selection of Dante in the bookshop and sessions with his therapist and priest began his reconciliation.
As a well-written chronicle of choice between the “success” of big cities and life in the far simpler world of old traditions and deep family ties, the book is both heartwarming and frustrating—certainly more confessional memoir than guide to Dante (a fact the author readily admits).Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941393-32-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Regan Arts
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
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
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 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.
