Easter Everywhere: A Memoir - Hardcover

Steinke, Darcey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582345309 ISBN 13: 9781582345307

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, 2007

Synopsis

The daughter of a minister and a former beauty queen, Darcey Steinke recalls accompanying her father on sick calls, stopping by the scene of accidents, and holding her own pretend wedding and funeral services. Her father's first church was built from a "church kit" and most of the parishioners worked at the local carnival. As a child, religion soaked all her activities. In Easter Everywhere, Steinke tracks her complex and changing ideas about God and how these ideas were impacted by her mother's nervous breakdown and her father's struggle with his parish before Steinke turned her back on religion, filling the void with club hopping and romantic obsessions. The second half of the memoir details how Steinke, after marriage, becoming a mother and then getting divorced, was able to finally accept her essential ignorance and begin, with the help of a remarkable Episcopal nun, Sister Leslie, the slow process toward a living faith. Easter Everywhere is a rare literary accomplishment, a beautifully crafted, riveting personal story with a huge emotional impact.

About this title

About the Author

Darcey Steinke is the author of four novels, two of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her novel Suicide Blonde has been translated into eight languages. Her short fiction has appeared in the Literary Review, Story Magazine, Bomb, and her nonfiction has been featured in the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, Spin, and the New York Times Magazine. She currently teaches at New School University in New York City and lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.

Review

“In poignant prose, the daughter of a minister and a depressed former beauty queen details her religious disillusionment.” ―People

“Lovely...compelling...[Thomas] Merton writes of the 'real and constant danger of carelessness and indifference . . . the millions of tepid and dull and sluggish and indifferent Christians who live a life that is still half animal, and who barely put up a struggle to keep the breath of grace alive in their souls.' Darcey Steinke has captured that struggle in painful but luminous detail. She's earned her measure of grace. And, like Merton before her, she possesses the skill and generosity of spirit to share it with readers.” ―Village Voice

“She drew this atheist reader deep into her devotional tale, seducing with prose that is rich and filling, with images that are startling and deep.” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Is it any wonder that from the Redeemer to Augustine, from Pascal to W.H. Auden, it has been the doubters, more than the believers, who have kept up religion's good name? A skeptic in this tradition, Darcey Steinke is also, in her own way, a skeptic about the virtues of the contemporary memoir, now a mostly secular genre in which every human unhappiness is trendily medicalized or assigned its origin in a topical childhood trauma....I became riveted by Steinke's tone, a steady, lovely, hallowed, patient, things-in-themselves hum...[Easter Everywhere is] a delicately wrought little volume ...This is a beautiful book.” ―New York Times Book Review

“[Steinke] serves sin and sainthood in equal portions, a dichotomy she continues to explore in her frank, beautiful new memoir, Easter Everywhere...Steinke tells her family saga with journalistic savvy, reporting on events rather than using them to force a point. There's no moralizing or gluey sentimentality...But even at its most measured, Easter Everywhere is full of surprises, especially as it maps out its author's return to spirituality: She finds sacredness not just in churches but in "libraries, garbage dumps, the cruising area of public parks." This book is an excellent account of a writer going head-to-head with the divine and finding some inner quiet--even in the darkest corners of her imagination.” ―Time Out New York

“Darcey Steinke certainly knows her way around characters and plot...it's a joy to see her inner life finally exposed.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

“Steinke unflinchingly recounts years of disillusionment in her stumble back toward faith.” ―Entertainment Weekly

“A smoothly written memoir detailing the derailing of a minister's daughter....at every conjuncture, the reader finds joy in Steinke's journey.” ―Booklist

“Her writing...is blunt and powerful...Steinke is a gifted writer, and this...leaves readers wanting more.” ―Publisher's Weekly

“You probably wouldn't envy Darcey Steinke her childhood...But her resolve to keep her adult mind as bubbling with question marks and wonderment as it did in her days spent coloring outside the lines could sting even the world-weary with fresh longing...She writes so easily and poetically of her childhood that the cheekiest sarcasm sails past like a smooth curveball...Steinke and her spritely daughter, Abbie, are an inspiring pair--together hungrily posing life's most sober questions and willfully facing skyward.” ―Elle

“I adore this book. Darcey Steinke beautifully leads us through her lifetime of spiritual seeking, from a childhood spent in the basement of her father's church, through a young adulthood of rebellion, into a mature and profound personal reckoning with the divine. She writes intelligently, honestly, movingly about a subject which is not always easy to address. It's an inspiration.” ―Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1582345309
• ISBN 13: 9781582345307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240