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Bezig met laden... Mysteries of Love and Grief: Reflections on a Plainswoman's Lifedoor Sandra Scofield
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  LenJoy | Mar 14, 2021 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Prijzen
"Retelling the life of her grandmother, Sandra Scofield examines the life of a plainswoman during the twentieth-century"--Provided by publisher.
"Frieda Harms was born into a farming family in Indian Territory in 1906. Widowed at thirty and left with three children in the midst of the Great Depression, she worked as a farmer, a railroad cook, a mill worker, and a nurse in four states. She died in 1983. Sandra Scofield spent most of her childhood with her grandmother Frieda and remained close to her in adulthood. When Frieda died, Sandra received her Bible and boxes of her photographs, letters, and notes. For thirty years, Sandra dipped into that cache. Sandra always sensed an undercurrent of hard feelings within her grandmother, but it was not until she sifted through Frieda's belongings that she began to understand how much her life had demanded, and how much she had given. At the same time, questions in Sandra's own history began to be answered, especially about the tug-of-war between her mother and grandmother. At last, in Mysteries of Love and Grief, Scofield wrestles with the meaning of her grandmother's saga of labor and loss, trying to balance her need to understand with respect for Frieda's mystery"-- Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)920.70979History and Geography Biography, genealogy, insignia Biography By GenderLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (5)
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Novelist Sandra Scofield’s memoir, Mysteries of Love and Grief, is composed of a series of essays about her family. Frieda, her maternal grandmother, widowed in her 30s with three kids to raise in the midst of the Great Depression in hardscrabble Texas, is the principal character in an ensemble that includes Edith, Scofield’s free-spirited, fragile and doomed mother, an ever-changing cast of husbands and boyfriends, and Scofield, the precocious, spoiled, determined-to-escape child of these complicated women.
This story feels like Scofield sitting in a comfortable chair telling us stories about her family. In the first chapter, “The Story Test,” Scofield explains how she came to write this book about her grandmother. I finished it and thought, “Okay, I understand this woman, Frieda.” And then I read the next essay, about the distribution of Frieda’s meager estate and I was surprised. Surprise was a common element in all of these essays, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising. Scofield probes the mysteries of her grandmother and her mother and the father she never knew and the baby she lost and with each discovery there is more mystery.
Scofield has a clear eye. She loves Frieda and her mother and many of the other characters, but is able to still see clearly both their mysterious strengths (such as Frieda’s never complain – never explain guiding principle) and their failings. She’s writing about real people and she makes them real for us. They are unbelievably generous and courageous and petty and shortsighted. It is written with love. She treats everyone fairly, even the characters she doesn’t love.
At the end of Scofield’s chapter, “Anger” she learns that because of her misdemeanor drug offense during the early 70s, the FBI came to her grandmother’s house to intimidate her, but her grandmother stared them down.
Scofield writes: “I hadn’t learned the beautiful power of anger when it is rooted in God’s love…I had never seen it on the faces of strong people standing up to injustice and suffering because I had never looked…
Something stirred: a sorrow for the many time I had hurt her with my absences and my wasted opportunities and her steady love. I ached for her to care about something better, steadier and more deserving than me, something worthy of her defiance. Something holy.”
A poignant, powerful story, beautifully written.
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