The House Where the Hardest Things Happened: A Memoir About Belonging - Hardcover

Caley, Kate Young

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385502982 ISBN 13: 9780385502986

Publisher: Doubleday, 2002

Synopsis

Fusing an intimate memoir with an outspoken critique of organized religion's failure to welcome all into its community, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened is the moving story of one woman's search for a sense of belonging.

Growing up in a small town in New Hampshire, Kate Young Caley attends a strong community church where everyone is treated like family, members selflessly help one another, and all the kids are made to feel special. Then, suddenly, everything changes. Her father is hospitalized for many months and her mother is forced to take a job as a waitress to support the family. But the job requires Kate's mother to serve alcohol, which goes against the church's covenant, and the family, banned from attending services, soon finds itself emotionally ostracized from the community.

In The House Where the Hardest Things Happened, Caley recounts the hurt and confusion she felt as a young girl and her long search for a religious community that would comfort her spiritually, support her emotionally, and respect her intellectual ideals. As she chronicles her journey, she candidly discusses her problems with the way the Christian faith is expressed and with the people who lay claim to it. Her exploration of religious teachings on homosexuality is especially powerful as she explains why she is unwilling, and unable, to deny the love she has for her gay brother.

At once the story of a family profoundly transformed by tragedy and an incisive exploration of the meaning of spirituality, The House Where the Hardest Things Happened will appeal to readers of Joyce Carol Oates’s We Were the Mulvaneys and Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies. Beautifully written, it brings to life Caley's inspiring determination to reclaim her right to practice her beliefs–the most basic human right of all.

About this title

Review

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

From the Back Cover

"A tender, thoughtful exploration of the life of a family with more than its share of suffering, in clear and exquisite writing. This spiritual memoir should appeal to anyone who has struggled with the damage that church can do to faith."
--Molly Wolf, author of Angels and Dragons

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0385502982
• ISBN 13: 9780385502986
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176