The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher | 0 | Paperback | Barnes & Noble
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life
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THE LITTLE WAY OF RUTHIE LEMING follows Rod Dreher, a Philadelphia journalist, back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana (pop. 1,700) in the wake of his younger sister Ruthie's death. When she was diagnosed at age 40 with a virulent form of cancer in 2010, Dreher was moved by the way the community he had left behind rallied around his dying sister, a schoolteacher. He was also struck by the grace and courage with which his sister dealt with the disease that eventually took her life. In Louisiana for Ruthie's funeral in the fall of 2011, Dreher began to wonder whether the ordinary life Ruthie led in their country town was in fact a path of hidden grandeur, even spiritual greatness, concealed within the modest life of a mother and teacher. In order to explore this revelation, Dreher and his wife decided to leave Philadelphia, move home to help with family responsibilities and have their three children grow up amidst the rituals that had defined his family for five generations-Mardi Gras, L.S.U. football games, and deer hunting.
As David Brooks poignantly described Dreher's journey homeward in a recent New York Times column, Dreher and his wife Julie "decided to accept the limitations of small-town life in exchange for the privilege of being part of a community."
Editorial Reviews
From Barnes & NobleJournalist Rod Dreher grew up in a tiny Louisiana hamlet (population: 1,700), but eventually a wider world called. Returning years later, he sensed th it was only after his kid sister Ruthie became seriously ill that he began to realize what he had really left behind. This memoir about the return of a Philadelphia reporter to his hometown touches on issues of family and loss, but much of it is about a sense of community that can be recovered. Editor's recommendation.
Publishers WeeklyFor author and Dallas Morning News columnist Dreher and his baby sister, Ruthie, their tiny Louisiana parish defined them as they grew up, bringing a sense of belonging to her and a need to escape for him. Family and community meant everything to the townspeople, and they routinely gathered at Dreher’s parents’ home and later his sister’s, but he found himself at odds with his father and sister, yearning for experiences beyond the confining borders of the parish. Dreher writes movingly of the struggles within himself and within his family, in particular with his sister. Ruthie became a schoolteacher with a huge impact on her students, beloved by everybody, but with little patience for what she viewed as her brother’s snobbish and overly intellectual thinking and lifestyle that grew into lifelong resentments. While Ruthie married her high school sweetheart before graduating from college and was content to never go far from her childhood door, Dreher changed jobs and cities multiple times even after settling down with a wife and kids. It wasn’t until his sister is diagnosed at 40 with cancer that he begins to re-evaluate his plans, realizing that after two decades away he is only now able to return, at peace with the decisions he made as he works to get to know his extended family better and tries to forgive and understand them. Through his sister’s life and in her death, Dreher, writing in this tender memoir, learns compassion, gratitude, and to focus on the blessings of the moment. Agent: Gary Morris. (Apr.)
From the PublisherIf you've ever felt an outsider in your own family, you've got to read this book. If you have ever had any "sibling-issues" you've got to read this book. This true, powerful, deeply-moving, and masterfully-told story is nothing less than a gift. And yes, indeed: it will change lives.
-- Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
If you are not prepared to cry, to learn, and to have your heart cracked open even a little bit by a true story of love, surrender, sacrifice, and family, then please do not read this book. Otherwise, do your soul a favor, and listen carefully to the unforgettable lessons of Ruthie Leming.
-- Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
Emotionally complex and genuinely affecting.
-- Kirkus Reviews
This is an authentic and deeply touching memoir, which honestly asks many of the best questions about the things that matter. Interacting with this story will change you!
-- Wm. Paul Young, author of The Shack and Cross Roads
This book will make you feel hunger pangs for what you didn't know you even missed. And then it will feed you, line upon line, soul bread. As the Israelites ate manna in the desert, Dreher's evocative prose gathers the unforgettable manna moments of Ruthie Leming's life.
--Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Rod Dreher tells a tale of dear things lost and dear things restored, but also, and unflinchingly, confronts some harder truths about old wounds that never fully heal and old misunderstandings that won't quite go away. This is a book that strives for truth more than beauty-and is all the more beautiful for it.
-Alan Jacobs, author of The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
"The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is Steel Magnolias for a new generation."
-Sela Ward, Emmy Award-winning actress and author of Homesick
"Thoughtful and thought-provoking..."
--USA Today
Library JournalThe fatal illness of his younger sister Ruthie (equally saintly and vinegar-tongued), leads conservative journalist Dreher to examine what he left behind in his childhood home of St. Francisville, LA, to pursue a writing career in cities such as Philadelphia and DC. The reasons for why “you can’t go home again” are evident to Dreher, who chronicles the tradeoffs between city and small-town life through the lens of his conversion to Catholicism and search for community.
VERDICT While Dreher’s account of a family devastated by the illness of a beloved member may comfort readers in similar circumstances, the religiosity of his approach to Ruthie’s illness and death may be harder for others to relate to.
(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus ReviewsA Louisiana-born journalist's memoir of how he came to terms with questions of personal belonging that accompanied his "country mouse" sister's tragically premature death. Dreher (Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots, 2006) was a restless dreamer who never quite went along with "the intolerance, the social conformity [and] the cliquishness" that characterized the rural Southern world into which he was born. His pretty and popular sister Ruthie, however, loved their hometown of St. Francisville and knew that everything she ever wanted in life was "in front of her." When Dreher received his first major career break away from home, he took the job. Ruthie, on the other hand, married and became a schoolteacher who took special interest in children from troubled homes. After the birth of Ruthie's first child in 1993, Dreher felt the unexpected tug of home. His hopes of reintegrating into his family and making peace with his father were soon dashed, and he returned to his peripatetic life as a journalist in 1994. Then, in 2010, he discovered that Ruthie was dying of cancer and returned to St. Francisville with his wife and sons. The outpouring of love and support he saw from the townspeople for his sister made him wonder once again if he had made the right choice to leave. But as he re-engaged with the dying Ruthie and her family, he also saw that his ambitions had stirred deep resentment in the people he loved most. Moved by his sister's courageous battle and the stories of how Ruthie's everyday acts of love had changed the lives of others, Dreher began the difficult process of humbly accepting "the limitations of place" to finally know "the joys that [could] also be found there." Emotionally complex and genuinely affecting.
Rod Dreher has been an editorial writer and columnist for the Dallas Morning News, a film critic for the New York Post and currently writes for The American Conservative. He currently lives in St. Francisville, Louisiana with his wife Julie and his three children. Thi his first was Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or At Least the Republican Party).
Average Rating 4.5
Sorry for your loss. Your story was beautifully
written, and I
Sorry for your loss. Your story was beautifully &written, and I am sure your sister loved you very much.Thank you for sharing your story with us. So many spend their whole life in a small town and never understand there is a whole big world&out there.&&
6 out of 7 people found this review helpful.
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I Cried HARD
Mrs. Ruthie was a vey close friend to my family i will never forget when she died i came home from school and my mom had been crying she handed ma the phone it was a close friend who told me i remember at her funral we all took our shoes off because it wad &her thing& please read truely heart felt story
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This is a complicated book, and not so much about death and bere
This is a complicated book, and not so much about death and bereavement as one would expect. There's a reason that William Young blurbed this book as a memoir. A memoir is understood to be autobiographical, and this book is mostly so. However there are several interesting passages, and even some laugh-out-loud funny parts made at the author's expense. If someone wishes to understand the continuing development of the author's patchwork political ideology this is a great book. Otherwise time is better spent elsewhere. Also there is a lot of religious discussion in the book which is only obliquely related to the death of the author's sister.The first part of the book introduces Ruthie as the wildly popular, outgoing, tomboy sister of the author who, being the opposite was withdrawn, bookish and hung out with his spinster aunts and their cats. He was unpopular in school, and kids were mean to him. Reading between the lines, one can discern that he earned at least some of this mistreatment in the vein of &Harriet the Spy&. Ruthie eventually became the homecoming queen and had a steady boyfriend pretty early on, getting married soon after school. The author couldn't wait to shake the dust of the town off his heels and move somewhere where people appreciated him more than his family and the benighted townsfolk.The second part discusses Ruthie's sudden illness which the inept town doctor misdiagnoses as an allergy when really it was an aggressive form of lung cancer. Of course this was devastating to their young family with three children and her parents. The author is amazed at how the town rallies around them to help the family with moral and monetary support. This amazeme this sort of community support for young victims of deadly illnesses is pretty normal to most people. He expresses the same awe at the size of her funeral, bemoaning his lack of a &deep bench& should he meet his demise in the city where he and his family didn't have as many friends. But it's pretty obvious from any close reading that his funeral wouldn't be as well attended as his sister's even in their hometown.The strangest parts of the book center on the author's attempt to square his supposed belief in his sister's sainthood with her bad treatment of himself and his family. Some of these are in the form of discussions with his teenage niece on a vacation they took in Paris together, just the two of them, after her mother's death. Amid their conversations, she lets it slip that he should give up trying to get closer to her younger sisters since her mother had conspired with her parents for years to badmouth him around her children, sowing distrust and dislike in her family for the author's family. This revelation incenses him and he expresses his anger in strong terms to his niece who becomes upset and regrets revealing this troubling fact.Something struck me at that point. The author asserts that his sister is a saint time and again, but it is highly possible that he is primarily trying to convince his readers--and perhaps himself--that he believes this. She was a good teacher who was loved by students, and a good wife and mother. But she was also mean and vindictive to her brother her entire life, never forgave him for slights, and was generally bigoted about anyone who was wealthy or lived in &the big city&. She hardly struggled against any of these tendencies, and she spent most of her illness in denial and fear. The last words she uttered were &I'm scared!& right before she died. Her religious practice was mostly ephemeral and therapeutic, and she openly mocked her brother for having a deeper faith and devotion to God. Surely the author's own definition of &saint& can scarcely be applied to her.
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The reader knows Ruthie Lemming is a special kind of person for
The reader knows Ruthie Lemming is a special kind of person form the first paragraphs of this memoir. She possessed a unique kind of Grace, acceptance and compassion that made everyone who met her feel welcomed, important and included. &In the Southeastern Louisiana town of West Feliciana, a town that &suffers no lack of kind people& she was &possibly the kindest person many (in that town) had ever met& (p.2). &Mr. Dreher, Ruthie&s brother uses his memories and interviews with other of Ms. Lemming&s family members and friends to show just how wonderful she was. By the end of the book, I felt such a connection with this woman that calling her anything but &Ruthie& would seem a betrayal of a friend.Ruthie and her brother were as opposite as could siblings ever be. &He enjoys reading, deep discussions, Spiritual reflection, intellectual pursuits and he left home when he was 17. &She loved the outdoors, chatting with people, hunting & fishing, accepted that God existed & loved her and lived all of her 42 years in the community into which she was born. They loved each other deeply and unabashedly but were not always friends. &Mr. Dreher cannot grasp why his &saint& (p.248) of a sister held regularly him is such disdain and was so readily judged him without the Grace she so easily gave to others.Ruthie is diagnosed with a virulent form of Lung Cancer when she was 41 (by the time it was discovered, she was at stage IV, with a life expectancy of six weeks to three months, she survived 19 months). &The author visited her, from his home in New York, as frequently as possible but he quickly realized living &away& and, before Ruthie&s illness, usually only seeing his family 3 weeks a year, &if we were lucky,& was not enough to repair his and Ruthie&s relationship. &This book is one of hope, redemption and living, it is not a book about death or grief. &What he does to find forgiveness and peace with his sister makes up the last 25% of the books& volume but it is the most powerful section of a very moving read. &Mr. Dreher&s openness in sharing his experience of learning the deep Spiritual truth that Love and rejection can be held with equal tension within a relationship is a worth the cost of reading this book. &This mystery can only be experienced & not explained nor completely understood & the author allows the readers to see his struggle in all its pain, confusion and resolution.There is no violence, sex or profanity to be found in these pages of this book. &There is sadness, grief, joy, laughter, conflict, revelation and moments of such existential intimacy that they seem to be voyeuristic throughout the book. &Have a dry hankie or a fresh box of tissues as you read of Ruthie&s illness. &Most of the tears I shed were in response to the kindness, generosity and compassion shown to, and by, Ruthie. &&The little way& of Ruthie Lemming was revealed to be the power of connection. &She touched people on a level that was easily recognized as their &self& and those lucky folks found acceptance as and where they were in that relationship. &One of the fruits of such connection is shown to be the hope that we can so freely give to each other and just as freely receive. &
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I read this on my Nook -- and did so because I admire Mr Dreher
I read this on my Nook -- and did so because I admire Mr Dreher political columns, and the topic of this work, his sister's battle with cancer, and his returning to his hometown seemed an important one. Mr. Dreher is an excellent writer, who can create believable and touching dialogue. I read it through, wishing he had not talked so much about his own issues.
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Highly Recommended
This book was moving, insightful and just plain excellent!
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Recommended
This book is probably more about the spiritual journey of the author than his sister, Ruthie. It is insightful and helps you consider what is important in life. They took different paths, but who can say one was right and the other wrong? Read it for yourself and decide.
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Living Room
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This true story of love and loss and the deep, yet complicated,
This true story of love and loss and the deep, yet complicated, ties of family was so eloquently written!
I shed tears through various parts of the story, but it was cathartic because it touched me in ways that I identified with....as I think any reader would.
I consider the reading of this book a spriritual gift.
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Well written
I really enjoyed this book and already recomended it to others.
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a very good read
I truly enjoyed the journey to appreciate the simple and good things in life,
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