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#5 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: There, There
It was Gertrude Stein who famously said of Oakland that “there is no there there.” In his debut novel, There There, Tommy Orange begs to differ. A pow wow in Oakland draws together a diverse group of Native Americans for a dramatic and violent encounter. But this is really about the stories and journeys that bring… →
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#6 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: Heartland
Yes, Sarah Smarsh was clearly making a shameless bid for a Top Ten spot on the Heartlands list with the title of her memoir: Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth. But the editorial staff here at Heartlands can’t be won over by gimmicks. It takes good writing to… →
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#7 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: The Thin Light of Freedom
History books are always going to find a way to my reading stand. One of the reasons is that I had one of the country’s greatest historians as a professor back in the day. Ed Ayers told the story of the United States, particularly of the American South, with an eye for conflicts, resilience, and… →
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#8 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: Chesapeake Requiem
Tangier Island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay has been getting a lot of attention in recent years. CNN did a report that got the mayor, Ooker Eskridge, an audience with the President. A social media storm naturally followed. And now Earl Swift has written a magisterial account of a year on the island.… →
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#9 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: The Sarah Book
In my last post, we began the countdown of the Heartlands Best Reads of 2018. Check out that post for the criteria. The Sarah Book is a crazy book, continuing author Scott McClanahan’s life goal of making West Virginia look even more offbeat than most folks already believe it to be. It’s scandalous, shocking, heart-breaking, and laugh-out-loud… →
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#10 Heartlands Best Reads of 2018: Turtles All the Way Down
What does it take to be a Heartlands Best Read of 2018? —Alex has to have read the book. This is a big limitation right from the get-go, but, hey, it’s reality. —Excellent writing. Good stories, good prose, good poetry. You won’t get there on the ideas alone. —A strong sense of place. —Preference is… →
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Godsend and Our Capacity for God
“I lack the spiritual gene,” the New York Times’ Dwight Garner says in reviewing John Wray’s new book, Godsend: A Novel. “I can grow resentful of novels that lead me into a cave of superstition and wished ignorance and then seal the entrance.” Not that he didn’t like the novel. Garner, (perhaps the leading book… →
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How are You Going to Tell the Story of Your Ministry? 3 Questions
“How are you going to tell the story of what God is doing in your ministry?” It’s often the forgotten question in planning, but it may be one of the most crucial. Failing to tell the story in a compelling way often leads to confusion about the mission, apathy, financial struggles, dispirited volunteers, and gingivitis.… →
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Silence, Poetry & the Salvation of Seamus Heaney
A Review of Christian Wiman’s He Held Radical Light The poet Seamus Heaney paused in the middle of dinner and leaned over to make a confession to Christian Wiman, who was, at the time, the editor of Poetry magazine. Knowing Wiman to be a Christian not only in name, Heaney admitted that he “felt caught between… →
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One Last Crossing with Cormac McCarthy: A Review of Cities of the Plain
We got John Grady and Billy Parham back for the last crossing. John Grady was the romantically-inclined teenaged horse whisperer from All the Pretty Horses. Billy Parham was the beleaguered teenaged ranch hand who seems always to be helping people get home—a wolf and his dead brother, Boyd, in The Crossing. Cormac McCarthy brings the… →
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