Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family Review

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Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family ReviewNot being a fan of any sort of religion, I'm curious, fascinated and a bit envious of people who believe deeply in their faith. Reading about Veronica Chater's pious mom and dad, and their travels between California and Portugal with 6 children in the 1970's to find the proper Catholic Utopia, is like watching fuzzy homemade movies of that era; and then trying to put the puzzle pieces together for days after, knowing there is a piece missing. Perhaps that piece is sanity. But you will enjoy the emotionally bumpy ride and come to find compassion for the characters you have absolutely nothing in common with. For example, the mother who prays in traffic with a load of kids in the backseat of the car, "Hail Mary, full of grace-Tracey, take that thing out of Jennifer's mouth before she chokes-who are in heaven hallowed be-Ronnie, that's enough pushing, keep your hands to yourself-kingdom come thy will be done on earth . . . Nick get off the floor!" Or, the dad, who quits the highway patrol, sells everything and has a backyard work shed called "the Womb" where he keeps track of Communists advancing across the globe.
I'm about half way through the book and I can't put it down. Chater is a talent not to be missed. She's a beautiful storyteller that keeps you coming back wanting more. This is the perfect book for a book club.Waiting for the Apocalypse: A Memoir of Faith and Family Overview

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Last Things: A Father Dowling Mystery Review

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Last Things: A Father Dowling Mystery ReviewFather Roger Dowling, the priest of St. Hilary's church in Fox River, Illinois, is rather shocked when Eleanor Wygnant who is not a member of his congregation, asks him to stop Jessica Bernardo from writing a book about her family. Realizing that Jessica's doings are not his concerns, he refuses to talk to the woman. The Bernardos are going through a difficult time of it right now with the patriarch of the family hospitalized and not expected to survive.
His son Raymond, who he hasn't seen in a decade, returns home knowing that his father despises his for leaving the priesthood and running away to California with a woman he later marries. Eleanor is worried that once Raymond's father dies, the love letter she wrote him during an affair will become public and hurt her sister-in-law. Raymond's younger brother Andrew, a college teacher with tenure is being held in jail on a homicide charge. Father Dowling doesn't think Andrew is guilty and sets about to prove it.
LAST THINGS is a very entertaining amateur sleuth novel starring a protagonist who is so likable readers will feel an immediate bond with him. Much of this novel is a relationship drama starring the Bernardo family and it is only the last quarter when the mystery really takes off. In fact, this is one Father Dowling mystery in which the popular priest plays a secondary albeit important role. Ralph McInerny has written another pleasing who done it.
Harriet KlausnerLast Things: A Father Dowling Mystery Overview

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To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel Review

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To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel ReviewThis novel by Tom McNeal is about Judith, a young woman who, when her parents divorce, moves from Vermont to a small college town in Nebraska where her father is a professor. It is also about Willy, a young man she "abandoned, and yet never quite left behind."
The story is about two worlds: the surface and what lies beneath the surface; the present and the past; the world Judith finds herself in when she reaches a mid-life crisis, and the world she longs for.
Judith lives in Los Angeles with her husband of twenty years. She edits movies. The turning point or "swerve" in her life begins when her husband buys a new bedroom set for their daughter Camille and places the old set out by the pool. To Judy, this bedroom set is not just any furniture. It is a birds-eye maple bedroom set that has family history and a special significance to her.
Judith rents a storage unit and secretly reconstructs it to look like the room she had when she was a teen. She escapes her reality of editing movies and the façade of her marriage by thinking back to the simple joys of her high school years. She finds herself drawn to the storage unit, again and again losing track of all time while she naps peacefully on her birds-eye maple bed.
We quickly realize that Judith's life in Los Angeles is superficial. Her musings about the high plains of Nebraska have the depth of simplicity. Her memories reveal who Judith really is beneath the surface. Those memories involve Willy, a young carpenter who ushered her into womanhood on the birds-eye maple bed and helped her appreciate the beauty of a sunset and his dream of a little acreage where he would one day create a small lake.
Judith's transformation into an alternate world is so complete that she creates a new identity and hires a detective to find three friends from her past. Of course, one of them is Willy, the boy she left in Nebraska.
Tom McNeal, author of award winning "Goodnight, Nebraska," spent part of every summer in Nebraska, at a farm where his mother was raised. To those of us familiar with the area, we recognize Rufus Sage as Chadron and are pleasantly startled to read references to Hemingford, Highway 385, Herman the Germans and other local places. I was not surprised, however, to realize that what matters most happens in small communities in America's heartland, and not on either coast.
I wondered about the title of the book, but then I thought about when I was a kid, taking a bath, and I let my head rest on the bottom of the tub, ears completely submerged, nose above waterline. I remember singing and listening to how different the tune sounded underwater. I remember how the words and music were clear and pure and limited to the voice inside my own head. Those two worlds-- life on the surface and life beneath the surface--still mesmerize me and those same worlds are captured eloquently and reflectively by Tom McNeal.
Immerse yourself. This book is "to be sung underwater."To Be Sung Underwater: A Novel Overview

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