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Chasing the Panther and Finding One’s Self: A Review of The Which Way Tree
You might say that Elizabeth Crook has written a classic boy’s adventure. The Which Way Tree is narrated by 17-year-old Benjamin Shreve, who tells the tale of an epic panther hunt in Civil War-era Texas. There are renegade soldiers, larger-than-life characters, chases through the Hill Country and a magnificent, terrifying beast. But this is also… →
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The UMC & The Which Way Tree
Preacher Dob, the Mexican horse thief, and two young teens were at a standstill. They had lost the trail of the panther they were hunting, the one who had killed the girl’s mother and on whom she had sworn vengeance. Zechariah, their panther dog, had gotten the worse of an encounter with a skunk, and… →
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Small Towns as Moral Communities: A Review of The Left Behind
Here’s the plot: a ragtag group of survivors suddenly discovers that people who have been a significant part of their lives have moved on leaving them in a desperate moral quandary as they try to piece together what has happened and work for a better future. No, it’s not Tim LeHaye’s rapture series, Left Behind. … →
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Living in the Pages of The Sarah Book: A Review
If I didn’t know Scott McClanahan, I’d be worried about him. In fact, I’d go up to him and ask, “What is wrong with you?” That’s a less profane version of the question his wife, Sarah, asks him near the beginning of The Sarah Book when he burns their wedding Bible after getting a series… →
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Looking In on Lookout Mountain: A Review of I Want to Show You More
There’s a lot going on up on Lookout Mountain. The battle of Chickamauga is not really over. 89-year-old Eva Bock braves traffic to walk up Lula Lake Road to deliver snail mail to President Bush protesting the war. A mainline church takes Corbett Earnshaw’s abrupt confession of disbelief as a sign and demolishes their building… →
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The Cold Aftermath of A Wrinkle in Time
It’s not solely because of A Wrinkle in Time that I’ve come to this conclusion, but…science fiction leaves me cold. We’re in a mini-boomlet of renewed interest in Madeline L’Engle’s children’s classic thanks to the Ava Duvernay movie and Sarah Arthur’s upcoming biography, A Light So Lovely: The Spiritual Legacy of Madleine L’Engle. So,… →
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Your Civil War Is Too Easy: Looking for The Thin Light of Freedom with Ed Ayers
Who starts a story of the Civil War in the middle? By the time Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia marched up the Shenandoah Valley into Pennsylvania in July of 1863, the war had been going for more than two years. The twin Confederate defeats at Gettysburg and Vicksburg on the 4th of July usually mark… →
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Sitting Beneath the Michigan Tree: Back at the Festival of Faith & Writing
Kwame Alexander, Newberry Award-winning author of The Crossover, looked out across the sea of 2,000 introverts and defied every tenet of writerly reserve. “Say ‘yes,’” he said. Say ‘yes’ to the opportunity, the challenge, even to the indignities of selling your work. There is power in your words. Kwame has a bus now with a… →
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Chicken Houses and Change
The old saw that says rural churches have a hard time with change may be getting tired. All you have to do is look around those churches to see that a lot of things are already changing. Maybe the question isn’t whether we will change, but how. It seems like every other day now I… →
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Merch — Plugging My Latest Publication
Happy to say that I got to write the Leader’s Guide for Adam Hamilton’s latest book, Unafraid: Living With Courage and Hope in Uncertain Times. Available now on Cokesbury. →
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