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My Journey Out of Christian Science
Lucia Ewing had what looked like an all-American childhood. She lived with her mother, father, sister, and brother in an affluent suburb of Minneapolis, where they enjoyed private schools, sleep-away camps, a country club membership, and skiing vacations. Surrounded by a tight-knit extended family, and doted upon by her parents, Lucia had no doubt she was loved and cared for. But when it came to accidents and illnesses, Lucia's parents didn't take their kids to the doctor's office - they prayed, and called a Christian Science practitioner.
fathermothergod is Lucia Greenhouse's story about growing up in Christian Science, in a house where you could not be sick, because you were perfect; where no medicine, even aspirin, was allowed. As a teenager, her visit to an ophthalmologist created a family crisis. She was a sophomore in college before she had her first annual physical. And in December 1985, when Lucia and her siblings, by then young adults, discovered that their mother was sick, they came face-to-face with the reality that they had few - if any - options to save her. Powerless as they watched their mother's agonizing suffering, Lucia and her siblings struggled with their own grief, anger, and confusion, facing scrutiny from the doctors to whom their parents finally allowed them to turn, and stinging rebuke from relatives who didn't share their parents' religious values.
In this haunting, beautifully written book, Lucia pulls back the curtain on the Christian Science faith and chronicles its complicated legacy for her family. At once an essentially American coming-of-age story and a glimpse into the practices of a religion few really understand, fathermothergod is an unflinching exploration of personal loss and the boundaries of family and faith.
First published in hardcover in August 2011
"I really wanted to like this book. It taught me a lot about Christian Science and some of it was quite compelling. However, other parts dragged and/or repeated needlessly. Also, Greenhouse provides an amazing amount of detail about her extended family which is difficult to keep up with and I eventually ended up asking myself why I needed to know about them at all." - Stacey Rae Brownlie, BookBrowse
"[A] powerfully affecting memoir... Greenhouse's skill in rendering family relationships under the intersecting stresses of illness and conflicting beliefs make the book worthwhile.... Wrenchingly courageous." - Kirkus Reviews
"Through this memoir, readers will see how even those closest to us can remain a mystery." - Library Journal
"A touching book that puts a human face on Christian Science." - Booklist
"Greenhouse very weakly tries to resolve the tension between her own beliefs and the Christian Science teachings that she never embraced, and she never works out the anger and resentment she has toward her father for what she believes are his misguided and unloving actions toward her mother." - Publishers Weekly
This information about fathermothergod was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: bobbyfriedel.com
Lucia Greenhouse a graduate of the Emma Willard School and Brown University, lives with her husband and four children in Westchester County, New York. She is the author of a memoir, fathermothergod.
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