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sherwoodreads 's review for:
Here If You Need Me
by Kate Braestrup
Witty, wry, and wise, Kate Braestrup's memoir about how the death of her beloved husband eventually led to her becoming a minister. She does not preach at the reader. She just talks about her own experiences, human, detailed, utterly compassionate, infinitely generous, and funny when acknowledging the total horror of her family when they discovered that she'd come to believe in God.
I got a little dizzy at the switchbacks between present and past, but other readers might not mind that. The writing itself is just exquisite. I even made it through grim details of search and rescue and finding bodies, subjects that are usually total turnoffs to me. (Search and rescue makes me anxious, and I am too squeamish for forensics.)
Here's a key graph from an e-mail to her brother, who wrote to ask an important question:
It doesn't matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child's footprints end at the river's edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth, then only the cliches are true, and you will repeat them, unashamed. Your life, too, will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction with breathtaking speed, and if you are really wise--and it's surprising and wondrous, Brother, how many people have this wondrous wisdom in them--you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms to you. If you are wise, whoever you are, you will let go, fall against that love, and be held.
I got a little dizzy at the switchbacks between present and past, but other readers might not mind that. The writing itself is just exquisite. I even made it through grim details of search and rescue and finding bodies, subjects that are usually total turnoffs to me. (Search and rescue makes me anxious, and I am too squeamish for forensics.)
Here's a key graph from an e-mail to her brother, who wrote to ask an important question:
It doesn't matter how educated, moneyed, or smart you are: when your child's footprints end at the river's edge, when the one you love has gone into the woods with a bleak outlook and a loaded gun, when the chaplain is walking toward you with bad news in her mouth, then only the cliches are true, and you will repeat them, unashamed. Your life, too, will swing suddenly and cruelly in a new direction with breathtaking speed, and if you are really wise--and it's surprising and wondrous, Brother, how many people have this wondrous wisdom in them--you will know enough to look around for love. It will be there, standing right on the hinge, holding out its arms to you. If you are wise, whoever you are, you will let go, fall against that love, and be held.