JESUS LAND: A MEMOIR (Kindle) by Julia Scheeres

Published in 2005 by Counterpoint.

Winner of the 2006 Alex Award from the American Library Association.

Winner of the 2006 New Visions Nonfiction Book Award from the Quality Paperback Book Club.

Note: I read because it is on a list of books that MAGA Republicans have asked to be banned in one way or another. I call it the MAGA Censorship List. More about that down below. 

Julia Scheeres grew up in around Lafayette, Indiana. She grew up in a fundamentalist household. When she begins this memoir, she has older brothers and sisters who have moved out of the house and lives with her parents and two adopted brothers out in the country outside of Lafayette. Her family is unique in that her two adopted brothers are black and the rest of the family is white.

The first part of Jesus Land: A Memoir deals with her horrible home and school life. At home, her father is mostly a distant figure. He returns home from work and dispenses discipline - often with great physical violence. These are not spankings - these are beatings with a 2x4. 

Her mother is a distant woman - more concerned with expressing love and support to missionaries she has never met in distant lands than in her own children. Her older adopted brother sexually abuses her for years.

Her younger adopted brother, however, is the closest to her in age and in spirit. His name is David. They are best friends and truly brother and sister. They are almost inseparable.

I say almost inseparable because when they go to school, Julia finds the racist pressure too much and often separates from her brother at school just to protect herself.

Halfway through the book, Julia and her younger brother get into trouble and are shipped off to a Christian Academy in the Dominican Republic called Escuela Caribe. Escuela Caribe advertises that it will help students free themselves from the influences of popular culture and maintain their education.

The school is really a lockdown facility. It is a reform school that is staffed with people with little or no training. All that is required of the staff is a high school diploma (or a GED) and faithful zeal.The students are in the Dominican Republic because it is on an island. They can't run away from the school because they don't know the language and the school holds their passports so they cannot go back to the United States.

The school is a model of brainwashing. Psychological abuse, cruelty, and even physical abuse runs rampant. Even straight out physical violence is used in an effort to show the campers the love of Jesus.

If that sounds wrong - well, that's because it is wrong. Very wrong.

I read this book because it was on a list of books that an angry parent group wanted to ban at a school corporation because it is anti-Christian and has sexual content (more on that later). I don't think of this book as "anti-Christian". All Scheeres did was point out that she and her brothers were physically beaten in their own homes by Christians and the violence continued at Escuela Caribe by Christians who hit them in the name of Jesus. My take as a lifelong Christian is that the book is not "anti-Christian". The behavior of the supposed Christians in this book is anti-Christian. Those "Christians" literally abused the author so much in the name of Jesus that she wants nothing to do with Jesus. 

Is there sexual content? Yes.

Is it glorified? No. 

It's actually pretty sad. 

More about Escuela Caribe here in a Newsweek article. Escuela Caribe is now closed but it was bought out by a group with lots and lots of ties to Mike Pence. The new school kept some of the same employees as the old school and has the exact same qualifications to be a staff member.

This was a profound and disturbing memoir. I was not disturbed by the actions of a girl trying to find her way. I was disturbed by adult Christians who psychologically and physically abuse people so they can show them the love of Jesus. It angered me like few books have ever angered me.

I rate this memoir 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: Jesus Land: A Memoir by Julia Scheeres. 

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD (audiobook) by Tony Horwitz

 

Published in 2008 by Random House Audio.
Read by John H. Mayer.
Duration: 17 hours, 16 minutes.
Unabridged.

In A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz set out to fill in a big gap in his understanding of American history. He vaguely knew that the Vikings arrived in the New World and did something or other and he knew about Columbus' voyage in 1492 and he knew about the Pilgrims and Plymouth Rock and the First Thanksgiving in 1621, but what happened in between? Also, what about the people that were already here?

Horwitz decided to find out what he didn't know and this book is a combined travelogue and history lesson. He starts with the small failed Viking settlement in Newfoundland, Canada, moves on to the Dominican Republic to learn about Columbus and comes to the United States to look at the first Spanish explorers and settlements in New Mexico and Florida. He also looks at the epic and eventually tragic expeditions of exploration that the Spanish sent out. Finally, he turns toward the early English attempts to explore and build colonies. 

A reconstruction of what a Viking longhouse in
Newfoundland may have looked like.

Typically, Horwitz starts out a section of his book by looking at the geographical area he is visiting as it is nowadays. He finds a variety of different locals to interview and lets them supplement the history he presents. Many times those local experts get very philosophical about how the past has influenced their homes.

Horwitz's roundabout way of discussing the history is almost always interesting - usually extremely interesting. However, the section on the Dominican Republic and a museum he visited there was too long and too repetitive. But, he bounces back from that and does a splendid job from that point forward.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: 

A VOYAGE LONG and STRANGE: REDISCOVERING the NEW WORLD by Tony Horwitz.

AMERICAN CIVIL WARS: THE UNITED STATES, LATIN AMERICA, EUROPE and the CRISIS of the 1860s (audiobook) by Don H. Doyle

I tried. I really did.

Published in 2017 by Tantor Audio.
Read by Johnny Heller and Jo Anna Perrin.
Duration: 8 hours, 58 minutes.
Unabridged.

The premise of American Civil Wars is interesting. The idea is to place the American Civil War in the context of the currents of the politics of the larger world of the time in order to show how the war changed the politics of other areas (prime examples are the Dominican Republic and Mexico - both were invaded by European powers while the United States was unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine) and how those outside political forces influenced the Civil War. One of the stated goals is that teachers read this book and try to bring these insights to their students in the classroom.

Don H. Doyle is the editor of this book. I think that it more accurate to say that he "collected" a series of essays by experts in non-American history that focused on how the Civil War affected their regions. I wish he had been a true editor because this book would have been much less repetitive. I estimate that 2 hours or more of judicial editing could be done to this 9 hour audiobook and do nothing but improve it. As I stated above, this book is supposedly aimed at the non-professional historian, but the writing is almost uniformly done in a dry academic style. The sentences are quite lengthy and hard to follow, especially in the audiobook format. It's not like I am unfamiliar with the topic - this is my 101st review of a Civil War-related book since 2001 and I read many more  before I started reviewing regularly. And, it's not like I am not used to audiobooks - this is 458th audiobook review.

The readers were also an issue. There are two. The first is Johnny Heller. I am literally a big fan of Johnny Heller as an audiobook reader, but he was completely miscast when he was hired to read this book. Audiobook readers are essentially actors performing the book. Heller reads very quickly, which is not usually a problem. But, with the length of these sentences (you can hear the semi-colons and parenthetical insertions), it was hard to keep track of what he was saying sometimes. To solve this, I was forced to re-set my phone's playback to 80% of the normal speed.

Jo Anna Perrin's readings, though, were worse. Robotic is the best description. It is full of strange pauses that remind me of a caricature of William Shatner at his worst. I assumed that she was a friend of the editor who persuaded him that she should read half of this audiobook. I was very surprised to see that she reads a lot of audiobooks. Hopefully, this is not her typical work. Oh, and yes, I did re-set my phone to play at normal speed.

I tried to finish it. I made it 6 hours and 58 minutes and then started listening to an essay that was literally covering the same ground as the previous one and just couldn't do it any longer. I literally have no problem with the research that went into the book or the conclusions of the authors. My problem in entirely in the presentation of the facts. I am reminded of this quote: "No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read." - David McCullough.

I rate this audibook 1 star out of 5. This book can be found on Amazon.com here: AMERICAN CIVIL WARS: THE UNITED STATES, LATIN AMERICA, EUROPE and the CRISIS of the 1860s by Don H. Doyle.

THE EASTERN STARS: HOW BASEBALL CHANGED the DOMINICAN TOWN of SAN PEDRO de MACORIS by Mark Kurlansky

Published in 2010 by Riverhead Books

The Eastern Stars is more a history of the Dominican Republic than a baseball book, but as author Mark Kurlansky clearly demonstrates, for the last 40 years or so the history of the Dominican Republic has clearly been molded and in some ways defined by its love of baseball. It is also a clear sign of the unhealthy state of economic affairs in a country when so many young people see no hope in moving up in the world except for playing professional baseball in America.

Kurlansky takes his readers through a meandering history of the Dominican Republic, moving backwards and forwards through time detailing a number of interesting stories about this Caribbean country but always coming back to the present to touch base and remind the readers that this is a baseball book, too. 

The Dominican Republic has had a long love affair with baseball thanks to American economic and military excursions into the country. It also has been so poorly managed by it various governments that for decades many young men have sacrificed everything in order to make it on to an American Major League Baseball team roster. Who can blame them - in 2006 ten percent of all major leaguers were from the Dominican Republic (p. 75). So many young men hope to win a contract, play for a few years and then return to the Dominican Republic and live like kings in their gated communities back in their hometowns.

Scouts prowl dusty sandlots looking for some spark of talent, even of the players are using balls made out socks and gloves made out of cardboard, the talent shines through. Or, at least they hope that it does.  Top prospects are enrolled in one of many "schools" that teach a lot of baseball and English and some math and science. In return, these schools get a cut of their contracts for helping to develop their talent. Even the Japanese teams have started sending scouts to the Dominican Republic.

As the title states, the real focus is the small fishing town of San Pedro de Macoris. It is unremarkable in every way except that it keeps producing major league baseball players. 

Why?

Kurlansky never comes out and says it, but after reading so many pages about the Dominican Republic and its sad history the reader just knows that it is because there really isn't anything else. It's either fishing in ever-more-depleted waters for less and less fish for more and more work or its baseball. Meanwhile, you can watch the SUVs of retired major leaguers pick their way around the potholes of roads that haven't been repaired in years and probably won't be anytime soon and know that the only rational choice is to put all of your effort into baseball and only baseball. Everything else is a sucker bet.

Note: many other reviewers have been critical of Kurlansky's detailing of some of the facts about the careers of some of the Dominican players the he describes, getting batting averages wrong and some of the dates wrong. No sport generates factoids like baseball and it is disappointing that Kurlansky has so many errors. But, read the book for what it was intended to be - a history of the Dominican Republic detailing how it became a sort of incubator for major league baseball players.

This book can be found on Amazon here: The Eastern Stars: How Baseball Changed the Dominican Town of San Pedro de Macoris.

I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.