The Force of a Story

In May, our family spent a week at Dewey Beach. I think it was the first time I was in Delaware, and it didn't disappoint. The water was cold, but the beach was beautiful, and we spent hours playing on the sand and jumping the waves. Several mornings I walked the beach at sunrise - my all-time favorite beach activity.

Family vacations are harder to schedule than they used to be, with young adult children and their busy lives. But when I told my children that all I wanted for my fiftieth birthday was all of us together for a few days, they made it work. I assumed it might be our last vacation before my oldest married. One of my brothers and his family joined us for the week, and another brother and his family came down for a day. 

One of my vacation traditions, begun when we vacationed at Chincoteague several years ago, is to bike to a used book store and buy a book as a souvenir. I've had varying success. Some areas don't have any bookstores, and I've resorted to raiding the little free libraries. Last year, in the mountains of West Virginia, I went home empty-handed.

One afternoon this year when we had all come back tired from a morning at the beach and the children were sprawled in the living room playing games, I decided to see if I could find a book. I found a tiny thrift store just down the road, one of those that isn't well organized, even a bit junky, where you can often find the best deals. In the back I found some boxes of books with a "3 for a $1" sign. I dug through the boxes, making stacks on the floor, and found several books to carry home. Success!

My Dewey Beach thrift finds. Not showing the titles since I haven't read them all, so don't know if I can recommend them.

One of the books was Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. I had seen this book on lists of best books by American authors and one of my friends had highly recommended it, but knew almost nothing about it. I won't ruin the story for you by telling you much about it. But after I finished it, I texted my sister and a couple friends and said, "Please read this book so I can talk to you about it." 

And several did. I didn't know I had so much influence.

And then they texted me back and said, "What do I do with this book? I loved it, but did the author want me to be angry?

It is that kind of book. You can't help but feel something. 

And you want to talk about it.

Crossing to Safety is a fictional story told by an old man looking back over his life and remembering a young couple who befriended his wife and him when they moved to a new job at a Wisconsin university during the Great Depression. This began a lifelong friendship between the two couples, weathering some serious trials through the years. 

Apparently Stegner wrote this book when he was 78, after a long illustrious writing career, basing the story on a lifetime friendship that he and his wife had with another couple. He powerfully captured human personality and emotion.

For the past year, I've discovered how much I like to be in control. When my children were small, I could hold onto an allusion of control, but as they grew, that crumbled. It has been a journey of learning to build my faith in God and open up my hands so others can grow. 

But reading Crossing to Safety was a gut punch. I know many people don't read fiction, because they think it a waste of time, but I'd argue that I could have read a lot of nonfiction books about the dangers of misplaced control and never experience the powerful message that Crossing to Safety gave me. 

Apparently I'm on a binge of reading books with elderly men as the main characters recalling scenes from long ago. In each I wondered how much of the stories were autobiographical. 

In This Is Happiness by Niall Williams, the narrator Noel is remembering when he was seventeen and sent to live with his grandparents in a little village of Faha in rural Ireland. Years later, he looks back on that day in spring, when the rain stopped, the electricity was finally coming to town, and everyone, but Noel, is in church for Holy Week, and a man comes to town. Why did this stranger come to Faha? The answer will take many pages to tell, because this is a slow, beautifully written book, and one to be savored. In other words, I don't recommend you reading This Is Happiness unless you can linger over a pretty sentence. 

I listened to the audio of This Is Happiness. The reader was excellent and whether he was describing drunken men in a pub or Noel's first crush on the doctor's daughter, the narrator added to the pleasure of the book. Like Stegner, Williams is a new author to me, and I'm eager to try more of his books. 

I had heard of This Is Happiness from Shawn Smucker who has raved about this book on his podcast. Ever since Shawn and his wife Maile opened up Nooks, a bookstore in Lancaster City, I've wanted to visit, and a few weeks ago, my youngest two girls and I made the trip. We weren't disappointed. 

I realized that I had very few actual book store experiences. Since Borders closed many years ago, we haven't had any good local bookstores. We do have a large used bookstore, which I visit often. I buy most of my books used, stalking library sales and online sources. But going to Nooks was a new experience. I saw so many of my favorite books on the shelves; it was like recognizing friends. I kept reaching out to touch favorite books.

Last fall, a new book by Wendell Berry came out. Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story continues the Port William series that Berry began with his first novel in 1960. I wanted to read it, but was also reluctant. Berry is 91 years old and likely this would be his last book. 

Unlike the two books by Stegner and Williams, I had read all of Berry's other novels and was deeply invested in the world of Port William. I wasn't sure how Marce Catlett would measure up. 

I also didn't want to purchase Marce Catlett from Amazon. Anyone who has read Berry's novels or nonfiction knows his grief for the destruction that big agribusiness has had on the small rural communities that he loves. But visiting Nooks was the perfect place to purchase Marce Catlett. (I'm sharing affiliate links in this post, for your convenience, but I'd love for you to order books at your local independent bookstore or online at a place like Nooks.)

For those who have read and loved Berry's books, you know the fictional character of Andy Catlett who appears in most of his books. It becomes obvious when you read a few of Berry's books that Berry created Andy to reflect Berry's own experience. 

In Marce Catlett, Andy is now an old man and reflecting on the story he had heard all his life of his grandfather, the Marce Catlett, who traveled many hours to watch the family tobacco crop be sold, only to find that through the monopoly of one buyer, the crop doesn't bring enough to pay for the shipping. The community, who worked all year on the crop, is devastated. Andy had seen his father, Wheeler, help form a cooperative to bring fair prices to the farmers in rural Kentucky. But Andy also watched the disinegration of the family farms in the decades after World War 2. 

Marce Catlett is maybe a bit more preachy than Berry's other novels. If you've never read Berry, I'd suggest you start with one of his other books, such as Hannah Coulter, not Marce Catlett. But if you've already fallen in love with Port William, you won't want to miss this one. 

Like his other books, Berry shows the disappearace of rural communities but gives no solutions. As one who believes that Jesus holds the answers to the poverty and drugs plaguing rural America, I wish he would depict faithful believers making a difference in those hurting communities, but sadly, that wouldn't be realistic. As always when I read Berry, it makes me want to love my neighbors, to truly see people and care well for them. 

We can never go back to the world as Berry remembers it from his childhood when neighbors supported each other and lived off the land, but maybe we can let the light of Jesus shine on our small part of the world. 

Maybe that is why I liked all three of these books. Whether in Kentucky, Wisconsin, or Ireland, in each one, a man looks back on his life and sees that his real wealth was the small acts of kindness that touched his life which he never forgot. 

As they share their stories, they powerfully inspire me to write my own story with love.

Have you read any books recently that you can't wait to talk about or that has inspired you to love your neighbor?