Rhoda Janzen realized her marriage had ended when in the middle of the night the phone rang and her husband’s male lover asked to speak with him. Soon after that Rhoda was in a car accident leaving her seriously injured. Now in her early forties, with her marriage of fifteen years in tatters, and nursing her injuries, Rhoda decides she needs to return home to her Mennonite roots and family.

And thus begins a wonderful, heartfelt, funny, articulate and warm memoir about going home, the meaning of family and insights on faith, love, and healing. At times serious and at other times laugh aloud funny, Janzen introduces us to her her warm, upbeat and quirky mother who suggests in all seriousness that Rhoda should marry her cousin Walter, who although an accountant, still drives a tractor and to her scholarly, taciturn, preacher father who loves to bellow from his study to come look at the animated Christmas card with the ten lords a-jumping, or a photograph of a beautiful sunset on his computer.

Maybe it is because my mother was Mennonite and we used to visit her family in a town with a population of 2,000 with nine (!) Mennonite churches, that I resonated with this book.  But I think more than that it is because it is a story of appreciating your roots, of seeing how you have been shaped both by how you were brought up and by what you left behind, that resonated most deeply with me.

And of course there are the mouthwatering descriptions of food! Anyone who goes to Amish of Mennonite markets knows what I mean!  Janzen talks about Zwiebach, a wonderful soft double decker roll that is a staple at any Mennonite home and I could remember so many times going to people’s homes and having Zwiebach and jam! I also identified with Janzen’s description of  the recipe for Zweibach that she got from her grandmother.

I have my grandmother’s recipe for Zwiebach. I mean I have the actual fifty-year-old piece of paper, written on the back of a Kalendarblatt, a leaf from a calendar. As far as I know, this is the one time my mother’s mother- whom I call Oma- ever wrote a recipe down. In 1960, when my mother was first married, she wrote from the tiny parsonage in North Dakota to ask her mother in Canada for the recipe. Oma sent the page from the calendar. …In the recipe Oma’s voice comes through, practical and vague, advising her daughter to use whatever she has handy in her larder- butter, or margarine, or even chicken fat. Oma assumed that ingredients would vary according to season and budget. She also assumed that knowledge of the correct quantities would miraculously come to my mother in the night. “Take some milk or some water and warm it, then add it to some flour,” she advised helpfully.

I have some recipes exactly like this from my mother and my grandmother!

Janzen is gifted in being able to talk about serious things with a light touch, which makes it all the easier to hear the deep wisdom behind her words. For example, this is her take on what is sexy in a man:

In my opinion, sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants. If the sparks don’t fly from the beginning, they never will. If he doesn’t get your sense of humor from the first conversation, you’ll always secretly be looking for someone who does.  And if a guy can’t see restaurant servers as real people with needs and dreams and crappy jobs, then I don’t want to be with him, even if he just won the Pulitzer Prize.

See what I mean? Wise with a light touch!  I thoroughly enjoyed this book!  Thanks Gina for recommending it!

Brenda’s Rating: ***** (5 out of 5 Stars)

Recommend this book to: Sharon, Marian, Lauren and Keith

Book Study Worthy? Yes!

Read in paperback!