It’s a great read, a fast read, one that makes you want to improve your own patience and charity. It’s funny, touching, and frustrating at times, just like real life, and we feel as if we are a welcome guest, old friends, at Tracy’s kitchen table in Little House.
Because this is a woman’s memoir, there were a few things that struck me as I read about her experience that I wanted to expound upon.
She observed the benefit to having a role reversal with her husband when he stayed home and she worked, a big change from their prior arrangement:
I suddenly knew how easy it is not to notice the little things; he found out how important it was to be noticed. I knew how nice it was to have a clean, orderly home; he knew how much work a clean and orderly home takes. I knew the self-esteem and value of paid work; he knew the frustration and humility of house work. I knew the unexpected joy of coming home to my kids and a husband I loved; he knew the relief and happiness when I walked through the door and it was no longer just him.
The newfound empathy goes both ways with an increase in respect and courtesy. I thought this was a great part of the story. As a single mom, trying hard to cope with three young children and no one else to co-parent, while also dealing with poverty, her coping strategy of identifying her “rocks” is a great one.
“What are the rocks?” By that I meant, what were the fact? What were the things I could absolutely count on, and what were the things that depended on other people, or were hopes and wishes?
And
This coping mechanism helped release me from the clutches of debilitating anger. I was no longer constantly in fight- or flight tension about nursing the kids through another emotional breakdown. Holding onto my rocks kept me sane.
Her insights as a parent were full of wisdom, particularly the wisdom to go with the flow and quit trying to control everything.
It was amazing how liberating it was to consider doing things differently. We didn’t have to be sad about not meeting an imaginary ideal.
She also talked about raising a special needs son all alone in this situation and “finding ways to show love that he could understand and that were never going to be about what I wanted.”
And when she focuses inward, trying to better herself, she dug deep to discover things that many women never realize.
I wanted to be comfortable in my skin, not necessarily thin. That wasn’t going to happen at the gym; it was work I had to do inside of myself.
She avoids the sin of selflessness and martyrdom.
I hadn’t yet realized the importance of including myself on the list of people who mattered.
Even more harrowing to me than dealing with a husband in the grip of addiction was the impact of poverty to her and her family, and the ways in which the government and other people both helped and hindered her. One example would have been funny had it not been so dispiriting:
It was a letter from the US Treasury Department informing me that they had seized my tax return for back child support. Oh, the irony. I had filed our taxes jointly because David and I were still married the previous year. I’d been hoping that tax return would help me, since I was not getting child support. The Department of the Treasury had confiscated my tax return to pay me child support. The taxes wouldn’t even have been filed at all had I not done it. Oh, sweet, bitter, irony.
Overall, this is a great memoir. It’s a human story that makes the most difficult situation relatable. And yet, Tracy’s graciousness even while in these dire circumstances, shine through. She captures moment after moment of beauty, love and grace. It reminded me of the street market in Marrakesh, an absolutely filthy path filled with chaos, loud motorcycles, haggling, but through the slats overhead, shafts of light illuminating those who pass through.
A quick read that kept me turning the pages and rooting for Tracy and David while still sensing the pull of the downward spiral. Tracy epitomizes grace under fire, and her wisdom is applicable even without the dire straits she experienced. My heart grew three sizes reading this. I wanted to buy a plane ticket and hug the author, and then go home and be a better person.
The Burning Point is available from CreateSpace, Amazon and BCC Press.
Do you enjoy memoirs? Any favorites? What other similar memoirs have you read?
Discuss.
Some memoirs are great, others are not. I am looking forward to this one very much.
One which particularly disappointed me was “Born with Teeth,” Kate Mulgrew’s memoir. Somehow I expected more substance, but I thought it, and she, turned out pretty fluffy.
Our tendency (as a people) to regard addiction as personal weakness and disobedience makes it very difficult to deal with in a church context. The Addiction Recovery Program has spotty success, for a number of reasons; calling well-meaning people to facilitate who have little or no experience dealing with addiction, and trying to cope with alcohol abuse, heavy drug use, and similar issues alongside addictions to Netflix binge-watching or cell-phone use being chief among them. I’ve usually counseled people with drinking issues to go to AA, drug issues to go to NA, etc.
When the church’s first reaction to a member’s confession of alcohol dependency is to take away the recommend and release them from callings, there’s a disconnect. Hopefully, books like Tracy’s (and a few others that had begun to hit the shelves of our local LDS bookstore before it shut down) will help to change things.
I was looking forward to reading this, and even more so after your review.
” She captures moment after moment of beauty, love and grace. It reminded me of the street market in Marrakesh, an absolutely filthy path filled with chaos, loud motorcycles, haggling, but through the slats overhead, shafts of light illuminating those who pass through.”
I have never been anywhere like that market in Marrakesh, but I now feel like I have.
If The Burning Point is anything as beautiful as this turn of phrase — and from the snippets you’ve included, and from what I know of Ms. McKay’s writing already, I’m sure it is — it will be something wonderful to read indeed.
I was already pretty excited to read this, but now I am over the top stoked!
“Do you enjoy memoirs?”
Now that you ask, I actually haven’t read many memoirs. In fact, I’m so unfamiliar with the genre that unless the words “a memoir” aren’t somewhere on the cover, I probably wouldn’t know I read one.
The two closest to/actual memoirs I have read was when I was 16 I read the a book Ty Detmer wrote about his time at BYU and in the NFL, the second would be Man’s Search for Meaning. Man’s Search for Meaning was awesome!
First off, just finished and thoroughly enjoyed The Black Penguin by Andrew Evans, a book highlighted over at By Common Consent in a June 18th post “Four queer folk.” Here are three other favorites:
1) Murph, by Dale Murphy (with Brad Rock and Lee Warnick): As a young Mormon kid, I became a big fan of baseball all-star Dale Murphy and relished this inside look at my hero. This was published in the 80s during the prime of his career. Pretty safe, youth-friendly book. It focuses on Murph’s rise to the major leagues and his conversion to Mormonism.
2) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou: assigned reading in an autobiographical writing class at Weber State University taught by Gordon Allred. So glad I was assigned this wonderful, vivid, and intense book. I will freely admit that empathy for women is not something that came naturally for me. This book helped a great deal. It also has one of the most hilarious church-service-out-of-control chapters you will ever experience.
3) Lucky Man: A Memoir by Michael J. Fox: Very enjoyable. Obviously important for its perspectives on show business and Parkinson’s Disease. But Michael can be quite candid about related topics including promiscuity and drinking. This memoir kept me a fan while humanizing a star.
Thanks for inspiring me to revisit my Goodreads.com shelves!
Jason B: I loved Man’s Search for Meaning. You might also like Night by Elie Weisel.
Maya Angelou’s book, yes! For a moment I was thinking of the Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, another very harrowing read. Worthwhile, but lots of violence, rape, etc.
Along the same lines, I have really enjoyed many of Ann Rule’s true crime books because it’s so interesting to get into the stories of what happened in the mind of the killers and how they ended up where they did.
Rule’s true crime books are a sort of guilty pleasure for me, as are gangster histories – the 1900s-1920s Capone-era mobsters and the Depression-era Dillinger-style bank robbers. They tend to indicate to me that we’re all capable of that sort of thing. While some people are pretty malicious and evil, some people just go with the flow.