The Book That Saved My Life
7/12/05 19:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsOkay, I'm sure there are people out there who feel this way about some book--that it came along at the right moment, that it defined something about your life and made you feel less isolated, that comforted you in some way. Several years ago I was asked to give a sermon (!!) at my UU church in New York (it was during the summer, when even the interim minister we had was often not around, so they were pulling in all sorts of members of the congregation to talk, and I did a sermon on fiction as life-saving device) and mentioned the book that saved my life, and people afterward commented that they had their own versions of such a book.
So I'm asking: what book saved your life?
And as a show of good faith, on the "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" principal: mine was Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford. I discovered it when I was 14, and newly moved from New York City to the small town in the Berkshires which had been our summer/weekend place; I had been socially maladroit in NY, but in Sheffield I felt like the Girl from Mars. I made friends with the librarian at the school and spent my study hall period shelving books and gossiping, and there was this book and I picked it up...and it was, in its way, all about me.
Actually, it's all about Josh Arnold, son of a shipbuilder and a Southern Belle, who, on the eve of his father's enlistment as a Naval Officer in WWII, is moved with his mother to Sagrado Corazon, New Mexico--the family's summer place. Dad takes them there, tells Josh to take care of his mother, then goes off to war. His mother is homesick and depressed and rapidly falls prey to the bottle and the blandishments of Jimbob Buel, professional Gentleman and House Guest. Josh finds his way--with the people in the town, with his family, with his own life. It's a wonderful book--maybe not quite as wonderful as I think it is, but then, I was bitten hard. And it's funny: Red Sky has the best dead horse scene in all of English literature, a fabulous shotgun-toting-father-of-pregnant-twins scene, and the Army-anti-VD-training-film-scene from which I took the title of my Blogger blog. It's full of picturesque characters and unexpected pockets of wisdom.
For me, stuck in a place which was, despite its familiarity, deeply alien, having to reinvent myself as someone who could fit in, or get along well-enough in this place, with a parent who was very unhappy, Red Sky resonated like a struck gong. It still does. Maybe it's not the perfect book, but for me, in that time and place, it was.
Do not confuse Red Sky with the fairly awful movie of the same name with Richard Thomas and Desi Arnaz Jr.
So I'm asking: what book saved your life?
And as a show of good faith, on the "I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours" principal: mine was Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford. I discovered it when I was 14, and newly moved from New York City to the small town in the Berkshires which had been our summer/weekend place; I had been socially maladroit in NY, but in Sheffield I felt like the Girl from Mars. I made friends with the librarian at the school and spent my study hall period shelving books and gossiping, and there was this book and I picked it up...and it was, in its way, all about me.
Actually, it's all about Josh Arnold, son of a shipbuilder and a Southern Belle, who, on the eve of his father's enlistment as a Naval Officer in WWII, is moved with his mother to Sagrado Corazon, New Mexico--the family's summer place. Dad takes them there, tells Josh to take care of his mother, then goes off to war. His mother is homesick and depressed and rapidly falls prey to the bottle and the blandishments of Jimbob Buel, professional Gentleman and House Guest. Josh finds his way--with the people in the town, with his family, with his own life. It's a wonderful book--maybe not quite as wonderful as I think it is, but then, I was bitten hard. And it's funny: Red Sky has the best dead horse scene in all of English literature, a fabulous shotgun-toting-father-of-pregnant-twins scene, and the Army-anti-VD-training-film-scene from which I took the title of my Blogger blog. It's full of picturesque characters and unexpected pockets of wisdom.
For me, stuck in a place which was, despite its familiarity, deeply alien, having to reinvent myself as someone who could fit in, or get along well-enough in this place, with a parent who was very unhappy, Red Sky resonated like a struck gong. It still does. Maybe it's not the perfect book, but for me, in that time and place, it was.
Do not confuse Red Sky with the fairly awful movie of the same name with Richard Thomas and Desi Arnaz Jr.