Right Through the Tangle

A Review of

Better Food for a Better World: A Novel
Erin McGraw

Hardback: Slant, 2013.
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Reviewed by Mary Bowling

In Erin McGraw’s novel, Better Food for a Better World, three couples of Californian thirtysomethings who have known each other since college decide to partner up and change the world for the better through ice cream.  Natural High: Better Food for a Better World is the name of the shop the six friends take turns running and managing, all while waiting to see the betterment happen around them and in their own lives. Nancy is the originator of the idea and dominant partner who, along with her husband, cows the others into acquiescence. Cecilia and David are a meticulous and meek wannabe musician and agriculturalist, and Vivy and Sam are free-spirited ex-promoters of offbeat talent. While day in and day out Nancy recites the supposedly inspirational mantras of Natural High, the others quietly simmer as they wrestle with  the lives they have given up in order to sell ice cream.

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Healing of all Sorts.

A Review of

Snake Oil: The Art of Healing and Truth-Telling.
Becca Stevens

Hardback: Jericho Books, 2013
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Reviewed by Emily Sutterfield
 

If you feel overwhelmed by the violence of today, disconnected from creation, and disheartened by the inequalities in society, Snake Oil will heal your heart and rebirth a much-needed  hope inside.
 

When I first picked up Snake Oil, I thought it was going to be just another book about some do-gooder starting a non-profit.  I was wrong.  This is a book that pulls apart the layers of the story of a priest starting a program for abused women.  Each layer unfolds in a beautiful way.  Organic.  Heartbreaking.  Hopeful.
 

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The Deep, Intensive Surgery Required

Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us about Subsistence, Sustainability, and Spirituality
Gary Holthaus

Culture of the Land Series.
Paperback: University Press of KY, 2013
(New Paperback Edition)
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Reviewed by Scot Martin

The pharmaceutical industry has made us good at treating symptoms, and once the pain has been ameliorated we tend to move on, ignoring the sickly roots that first caused the symptoms.  “The most important task in our time is not to protect the land or create social justice but to create a sustainable culture,” asserts Gary Holthaus against that kind of symptom-treating-only thinking in Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us about Subsistence, Sustainability, and Spirituality” (6).

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Learning to Find Joy in Each Day

A Review of  

Wonderstruck: Awaken to the Nearness of God
Margaret Feinberg

Paperback: Worthy Publishing, 2013
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Reviewed by Kimberly Roth

Margaret Feinberg is one of those authors who walk with one foot in the evangelical world and one foot in the mystical. Or, perhaps a better way to say it is this: she walks the evangelical path in a mystic’s shoes. Either way, there may be those who find themselves uncomfortable on her journeys – either because she’s too “out-there” or because she’s too “in-your-face” (depending on your personal bent, of course).

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A God who Loves and Treasures

A Review of

The Exact Place: A Memoir
Margie Haack

Paperback: Kalos Press, 2012.
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Reviewed by MaryAnn McKibben Dana

Margie Haack’s memoir is aptly named. Her descriptions of the rural Minnesota in which she grew up is so painstakingly rendered that one might consider the landscape a character in itself. It is a place that entertains and nurtures; it is also a place that startles and admonishes.

Haack’s memoir tells the story of her growing up years in a cramped house full of siblings, a mother who was widowed young, and a stepfather who withheld the unconditional love that young Margie so craved. The fact of this withholding is delivered with all the matter-of-factness of a child—this is the world as it is; there’s no changing it—which gives her attempts to earn his love (and her despair when she displeases him) an added poignancy.

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A Panoply of Human Error

A Review of

Enticed by Eden: How Western Culture Uses, Confuses (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve
Linda S. Schearing and Valarie H. Ziegler

Paperback: Baylor UP, 2013
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Reviewed by Liz Windhorst Harmer

We all know the story: the first man formed out of dust, the first woman formed from his rib, the garden full of good things, the one tree they are forbidden to eat from. The inevitability of a fall. What seems like a small act—Eve accepting the serpent’s lies—has eternal ramifications.
 
As Linda S. Schearing and Valarie H. Ziegler, both professors of Religious Studies, rightly point out, Adam and Eve are still with us. Their book, Enticed by Eden: How Western Culture Uses, Confuses, (and Sometimes Abuses) Adam and Eve, travels far and wide to find the places in our culture where Adam and Eve are made heavy with meaning, from evangelical movements promoting the submission of women to men, to internet discussion boards for practitioners of “Christian Domestic Discipline” (wife-spankers), to the jokes and advertisements that use and often subvert the Genesis story. Everywhere you find Adam and Eve you also find gender stereotypes, ideas about sex, and ideas about the nature of sin.

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What are We Hungry For?