My friend Prof. Leroy Huizenga, who read early drafts of The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming and offered me his advice, has published a review of the book. Excerpt:

And so I got to read a near-final draft of the book some months before publication as a Word file (see page 271), which as you know, isn’t great for sustained reading. But I couldn’t stop. I got the file, I think, late at night, perhaps ten one evening, and read the thing, as a Word file, on my Macbook Air, straight through, until roughly sunrise.

It’s that good. Maybe good isn’t the word, as that usually has to do with the capacity of a contemporary book to entertain, like John Grisham before he ran out of gas, or Tom Clancy before the USSR broke up. (I miss the Cold War for that reason alone: the decline of Clancy.) Perhaps the two best words are “gripping” and “compelling.”

Rod’s writing here is real, and open without being overly raw and certainly not exploitative. The reader feels he knows these people as Rod brings their lives to the page honestly. The tale tells itself, and Rod need neither lecture, preach, nor editorialize.

I don’t like crying. So sue me: I’m a German/Dutch-American from what my sister calls Baja Saskatchewan, the town of Minot, in frozen northwestern North Dakota, having played hockey and football. I sometimes joke with my students that crying is morally wrong. It’s just not what I do. But reading this book, I just lost it at points. OK, for most of the wee hours. (And like Augustine who in Book 9 of his Confessions also seems to think crying is wrong, I’d pray, dear reader, that if ye be tempted to heap scorn upon my tears, ye would rather weep for me and my sins in my grief [Conf. 9:12/33].)

In short, this book isn’t merely a good read. It’s catharsis, grace, and challenge. It may just inspire you to think, and live, differently, authentically, simply, in the everyday.

Thank you, Leroy, for your help and your kind judgment. I expect to see you at the Walker Percy Festival, yes?