Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story

admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Traveling With Pomegranates tells the two parallel stories of its authors, a mother and daughter. The two women learn about themselves while abroad in Greece and France, as well as in their respective homes in South Carolina.

Ann comes to terms with her disappointment in receiving a rejection letter from the only affordable school offering a Master's degree in Greek history. During the year that follows, she is plagued with depression that follows this blow to her confidence. While traveling with her mother, Ann maps out her path as a writer, even though she had long resisted following in her mothers footsteps. (She didn't want to risk a lifetime of being compared to her mother.) Ann finds out she a unique knack for travel writing, which helps her to preserve her independent spirit.

Sue’s discoveries bring forth the ideas, imagery, and symbolism that formed her hugely successful book, The Secret Life of Bees. While Traveling With Pomegranates contains some of the same Southern magic and mystique as The Secret Life of Bees, it hits a little closer to home for the average reader. These women’s lives are at once ordinary and extraordinary, but the way they tell their tale of reconnecting with the energizing spirit of Greece is inspiring.

With Greek mythology guiding their tour, Sue and Ann are each profoundly influenced Persephone, Demeter, and various portrayals of Mary they find in various places: a cave, cathedrals, a convent in the mountains, the coast of South Carolina, books, the tiny pomegranate charms they wear. This modern mom-and-daughter travel story tells of the magic of Greece, which the pair find in odd coincidences and signs they encounter. The magic for the reader is in their scintillating descriptions of the country's architecture, taxi drivers, performers, and lovers.

The connection between these two is exceptional. The cohesion of their experiences and concern for each other creates a mutual understanding and emotional response to their trip that all of us an learn from. Traveling With Pomegranates imparts wisdom in its perspectives on accepting rejection, coping with depression, managing life changes after marriage, settling into menopause, and seizing the day.

Written by: Heather Irvine, February 23rd 2010

Firstlight

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 12:09:00 +0000

By Sue Monk Kidd

Guidepost Books

When I read the introduction of Firstlight, Sue Monk Kidd’s new book, I was disappointed. I neglected to read the flap in the bookstore. After all, this was Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Life of Bees, one of my all time favorite novels. I learned as I read that this book was a collection of inspirational writings from her early career, and these writings had been previously published in Guidepost, a magazine I related to my grandmother because the newest copy could always be found on her coffee table on any given visit. I almost closed the book without reading another word; this just wasn’t my kind of book. But my eye caught the explanation for the book’s title, _Firstlight _(all one word), a word she used to describe the light that comes just before dawn. I had to give the book a chance.

I did not make a mistake. This little book of early personal essays allows the reader to glimpse the foundation on which the author wrote her bestselling novels, which are acclaimed for both their simplicity and intricate details. The writings in _Fristlight _tell the story of Sue Monk Kidd in bits and pieces. In one story, we learn her husband loses his ability to speak clearly from a complication during throat surgery. The author tells the readers, in her early thirties, after reading Thomas Merton’s “The Seven Storey Mountain,” she knew she wanted to be a writer. Sue Monk Kidd takes us back to a front porch in the old south as fireflies dot the sky and folks just watch in no hurry. We are among the attendees at her grandmother’s funeral on a warm spring day in South Georgia. We struggle with her as she deals with the trials of being a mother and a writer in the seventies.

This book gives a positive take on life, and it lends the reader a sense of hope in times that dwell in the negative.

Written by: Ann Hite, April 3rd 2007