A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry (Nonpareil Book, 95)

A refreshing and often very funny account of the hands-on work needed to maintain a church and sustain its spirit.

Episcopalian minister, Garret Keizer, takes his inspiration from the prophet Amos, a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, who also had the calling as a shepherd of human souls. This profoundly contemporary book, set in Keizer's community of Island Pond in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, displays not only a knowledge of life's small practicalities (winding the church clock, shopping for groceries), but also insights about faith and the mysterious ways of God.

With an eye attuned to both the pleasures and foibles that make life on earth so rich, Garret Keizer believes that God's intentions, if seldom apparent, are inevitably compassionate and wise to trust.

Chosen as one of the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die, James Mustich recommends this memoir by saying, “Garret Keizer grapples with epiphanies and aggravations with equal eloquence . . . A Dresser of Sycamore Trees is an inspiriting book, its alertness to what one reader calls ‘the extraordinary dailiness of grace’ is both uncanny and true-to-life.”

Garret Keizer is the author of several books on teaching and faith, including Help: the Original Human Dilemma (2009), The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book about Noise (2012), and Getting Schooled: The Reeducation of an American Teacher (2014). He lives in Vermont with his family.