So says William Doino in his First Things column. Excerpts:

Beautifully written and unforgettably told, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming is a memoir about Rod Dreher’s younger sister and the extraordinary impact she had upon her family and community. Subtitled “A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life,” Dreher’s tour de force delivers on every level.

More:

Never have I read anything as moving as Dreher’s description of what a family undergoes when one of its members is stricken with a grave disease. From the moment of her diagnosis, to the breaking of the news to her frightened children, to her eventual death in the arms of her indomitable and loving husband nineteen months later (she outlived expectations by over a year), the reader suffers every step with Rod, and Ruthie’s family.

Dreher’s memoir is about more than life and death; it is also about the American dream. That phrase is expansive and open-ended, as perhaps it should be, given the at times seemingly boundless possibilities our country offers. But somewhere along the way, the “American dream” became reduced to two things: money and success. There is nothing wrong with either, but, as Dreher communicates so well, if the two become the object of our obsession, to the exclusion of everything else, we end haunted by emptiness. Dreher’s delicate treatment of our national dream gives the book a claim to being a modern American classic.

 Read the whole thing. William Doino, I am humbled by your judgment and enormously in your debt. Thank you.