Description:
The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the best kind of spiritual memoir. It tells a great story, has a reliable narrator, and teaches enormous lessons about Christianity and spirit without once faltering into preachy, "spiritual" language. When Kate Young Caley was a young child her family belonged to the First Church of God in Moultonboro, New Hampshire. "Back then the sounds of Sunday mornings were sounds that meant everything was all right," she writes. "That we were all together. Cleaned and dressed up.... When we walked into the church everybody loved us."But when Caley's father is diagnosed with cancer and is hospitalized for months, Caley's 29-year-old mother needs to support the family by waitressing in town. Because the restaurant sells liquor, the mother is breaking the church's covenant, and the church community votes the family out of the church. This cruel banishment, when the family most needed a spiritual community, becomes the defining moment of Caley's childhood. More than a beautifully written personal story, this is a lifelong exposé of the hypocrisy inherent in many church communities. Ultimately, we see that the problem isn't Christianity, but the people who control and manipulate it. --Gail Hudson
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