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Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir

Name: Marriage and Other Acts of Charity: A Memoir
Author: Kate Braestrup
ISBN: 9780316031905

by Kate Braestrup

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Overview

In her award-winning memoir Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup won the hearts of readers across the country with her deeply moving and deftly humorous stories of faith, hope and family. Now, with her inimitable voice and generous spirit, she turns her attention to the subjects of love and commitment in MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY.

As a minister, Kate Braestrup regularly performs weddings. She has also, at 44, been married twice and widowed once, and accordingly has much to say about life after the ceremony. From helping a newlywed couple make amends after their first fight to preparing herself for her second marriage, Braestrup offers her insights and experiences on what it truly means to share your life with someone, from the first kiss to the last straw, for better or for worse.

Part memoir, part observation of modern marriage, and part meditation on the roles of God and love in our everyday lives, MARRIAGE AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY is a unique and unforgettable look into why, and how, we love each other, and proves yet again why Kate Braestrup's writing is "inspirational in the best sense" (New York Daily News).

Synopsis

Kate Braestrup has been married and widowed, betrayed and betrothed, her personal spirituality constantly evolving along the way. How do God and love figure in our everyday lives and bonds with others? In MARRIAGE, AND OTHER ACTS OF CHARITY, she tackles these big questions with stories from her own relationships romantic and familial, platonic and professional much as Anne Lamott weaves her spirituality through her tales of parenthood. With the same compassion and warmth that made Here If You Need Me a New York Times bestseller, Braestrup engages readers fully, regardless of their path in life. She tells us about teaching sex education for her daughter's eighth-grade class, and the welcome embrace extended toward her adopted nephew from Africa. She introduces the essential concept that charity the key to all relationships is a whole-hearted selfless emotion, which is but a hint of God's immense devotion. Kate Braestrup's very human outlook gives anyone seeking to understand...

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

…the dialogue is deft and elegant, the scenery and back stories interesting and intense. The game wardens of Maine live on an icy edge between life and death; Braestrup evokes that world with skill.

About the Author, Kate Braestrup

It was while working through the grief and loss of early widowhood that Unitarian minister Kate Braestrup found her true calling. A law enforcement chaplain for the Maine Game Warden Service, she is the author of the award-winning memoir Here if You Need Me.

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Editorials

Carolyn See

Publishers Weekly

In this breezy, soft-pedaling exercise in spiritual empowerment, Braestrup (Here If You Need Me) shares some of her hard-won marital wisdom. As an ordained minister, Braestrup counsels couples to love and cherish one another, even in the face of a 50% divorce rate, and asserts that of the three kinds of love known in ancient biblical Greek—eros, philos, and agape—the greatest is the last. Translated into Latin as charitas, agape is the generous, selfless love given unconditionally and best mimics the nature of God's love. Braestrup traces her own call to the ministry to the aftermath of the shocking sudden death of her policeman husband, Drew, killed in a car accident in 1996, when her family and friends rallied around her and the couple's four children with abundant love and care. She reveals that not long before his death, the couple had suffered a marital crisis and sought counseling for what the author considered clearly Drew's “incurable character disorder”; however, she was jolted from the brink by the thought of their losing each other. Employing examples of the couples she knows, such as game warden Jeremy Judd and his betrothed, town dispatcher Melanie, who sought the author's advice as they embarked on their marriage, as well as a soon-to-be-divorced couple, Jesse and Georgiana, Braestrup offers grains of folksy, charitable wisdom. She is comfortable discussing death (“One hundred percent of marriages end”), declaring that the only recourse is Jesus' message: “Love more.” (Jan.)

Kirkus Reviews

Another volume of quietly humorous reflections from the first woman chaplain of the Maine Warden Service. Braestrup (Here If You Need Me, 2007, etc.) again recounts both tense and tender moments with the men of the Maine Warden Service, whom she not only accompanies on search-and-rescue operations but also gently counsels on matters of the heart. The author, who described the death of her young husband in her first memoir, now reveals the stresses of the early years of that marriage and, in a self-deprecating manner, the rocky times when her anger ruled and divorce seemed the likely answer. A widow with four children, she eventually met the right man, fell in love and married again. Armed with the experience of her marital history and a religious perspective that may surprise the orthodox-she defines herself as "a post-Christian, left-leaning, nondoctrinal, noncreedal Unitarian Universalist"-she brings to her counseling of others a warm heart and an appealing frankness. Her lecture on values to a classroom of 13-year-olds moves from a hilarious bit on sexual reproduction to a moving discussion of the distinctions between various kinds of love, in which she introduces the Greek words eros, philos and agape to explain erotic, brotherly and unconditional, selfless love. One lesson Braestrup imparts is that all marriages end, that all relationships end and that the way to live in the face of this harsh reality is to love more. Nonpreachy, a bit earthy and full of life and love. Agent: Sally Wofford-Girand/Brick House Literary Agents

Library Journal

In this follow-up to the New York Times best-selling memoir Here If You Need Me (2007)—also available from Hachette Audio—author Braestrup (www.katebraestrup.com), who has been married twice, widowed, and on a few bad dates, writes of the experience of being married in this age of no-fault divorces and Internet dating. She speaks as wife, Unitarian minister, and chaplain for the Maine Warden Service about what it means to share one's life, the vows couples make to each other, and the true meaning of "for better or worse." Her musings are touching, entertaining, and poignant, and her narration is lively, making for the best kind of storytelling. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/09.—Ed.]—Pam Kingsbury, Univ. of North Alabama, Florence