Book Reviews

Review: The Sun Does Shine:
How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

October 30, 2018 By Judith Favor

By Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin

St. Martin’s Press, 2018. 272 pages.
$26.99/hardcover; $16.99/paperback (available June 2019); $13.99/eBook.

Reviewed by Judith Favor on October 1, 2018 in Friends Journal

The Sun Does Shine is the true story of an innocent black man’s unjust conviction, his despair on Alabama’s death row, and his practice of peacemaking behind bars. In “The Death Squad” chapter, Anthony Ray Hinton’s anguish is palpable as he describes men in chains being walked past his cell to the electric chair. He leads inmates to bang on the bars of their cells during electrocutions, raising a holy ruckus of accompaniment and protest.

Hinton eased racial grudges and grievances by aiding KKK and African American inmates alike. “A book club will help things stay more peaceful,” he told the warden, pointing out that reading books would be a good way for the men to quietly spend time and focus on something other than the negative aspects of life on death row. He also added, “I do think it will help [the guards] have an easier time doing their jobs.” His resourcefulness led to the first death row book club. In chapters titled “Love Is a Foreign Language” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” Hinton reveals which authors forged community between black and white convicts.

I was disappointed in two aspects of The Sun Does Shine. My friend Rosie on death row cannot read it, because hardcover books are forbidden in her facility (and in many others too). My greater hurt is all the women missing from the afterword. Preceding nine pages of “the men and women who sit on death row in this country” (as of March 2017) listed in “Pray for Them by Name,” Hinton writes:

Statistically, one out of every ten men on this list is innocent.… Read these names. Know their stories.… The moral arc of the universe needs people to support it as it bends.… Read the names out loud. After every tenth name, say, “Innocent.” … The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the Death Squad or you are banging on the bars. Choose.

He chose a provocative way to conclude, but I am pained that, for some reason, the women on death row in Central California Women’s Facility and other facilities are not acknowledged.

During the author’s reading at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, I was moved by his honesty, his vulnerability, and his simplicity. Hinton’s true voice is inscribed on every page, and his tears, too. Three relationships kept him going through 30 years of wrongful incarceration: his mother’s unconditional love, his friend Lester’s faithful visits, and legal advocate Bryan Stevenson’s commitment to setting him free. Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy, took Hinton’s case to the Supreme Court where all nine justices confirmed his innocence. That day at the bookstore, Hinton gave the crowd one closing bit of advice: “If you ever get arrested for a crime you didn’t commit, do two things. Pray first, then make your 911 call directly to Bryan Stevenson.”

The Sun Does Shine may deepen the commitment of Friends working for prison reform, offer fresh insights to Friends conducting Alternatives to Violence Project workshops with inmates, and perhaps inspire new AVP volunteers.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

The Beacons

January 19, 2017 By Judith Favor

SUMMARY

There’s a lot to love about the women of Saint Lydia’s in San Francisco. Head Beacon Beka and her sidekick Dot turned out to be very good at getting rid of a predatory male pastor. Female church leaders were rare in 1976, but they found an ordained woman to shepherd their flock. The five Beacons, their prickly minister and a young Mexican prostitute all took risks, made mistakes and followed their hearts to set a wild new course for their historic interracial, interdenominational congregation in “The City.”

The Beacons reveals the souls of lay leaders, how they sought spiritual guidance, earned the respect they deserved and gained the freedom to run their church in an egalitarian way. Younger readers of diverse ethnicities and orientations will glimpse pioneering feminine faith in action. Older women will almost certainly remember fights for equality during those chaotic 1970s, and San Franciscans will get a fresh view of that infamous era of sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll through the stories of a few memorable Christian visionaries.

BLURBS

Judith Favor offers us a delicious, saucy slice of mid-70s San Francisco. The Beacons provides generous servings of the beautiful city plus a kaleidoscope of characters, lifestyles and spiritual practices. Deeply textured and finely tuned, this novel crackles with lively energy.

Mary Atwood, Episcopal priest

It isn’t often that readers interested in religion have a chance to learn about the inner workings of a small but active congregation, especially when the story entails conflicts between clergy and parish leadership. Judith Favor has beautifully provided such a look with her fictional well-trained older Episcopal priest. The long-time church “Beacons,” each well-described, struggle with their pro and con emotions while the first-time reverend agonizes over her inability to persuade them to an orthodox faith. A carefully crafted microcosm of American congregational struggles in our post-Christiandom era. [Christendom?]

Jean Lesher, religious book editor

Judith Favor has created a delightful gang of deacons here in The Beacons! You will come to know and love them as they grapple with their own psyches, their collective mission, and the evolving conditions of their time and place. The superbly drawn focus of this tale—the trials and tribulations of their courageous choice for replacement priest—rings true and deep, and will leave you hoping for more.

Michael Kirk, artist/designer/editor

Judith Favor’s novel lives next door to Armistead Maupin’s San Francisco of the Seventies. In The Beacons we glimpse a radical Christianity—radical because women took over leadership of an interracial church. Favor gives an insider’s look at what happened in a place few of us have imagined.

John Brantingham, author of Let Us All Now Pray to Our Own Strange Gods

[John Brantingham’s work has appeared in hundreds of magazines in the United States and England, and his poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. His other books

READERS’ GROUPS: Some Open-Ended Questions

January 18, 2017 By Judith Favor

Working Cover Draft for The Beacons
a new novel
by Judith Favor

Pick those that spark a strong response in you…

The GATE: ENTRY POINTS

What pulled you into the story; conflict, collaboration or something else?
Which character made you care? What about her sparked your interest?
Which themes kept your attention? Say more…
Have you ever served on a pastoral search committee? Any regrets?
Have you ever made a life-changing decision, only to wind up doubting your own wisdom? Describe a bit about this…

The TUNNELS: UNDERNEATH

Have you ever been groped? More than once? What happened?
Have you ever confronted a sexual predator? When? Where? How?
Have you ever worked with strong women to get rid of a predator, or bring about needed change in your school, church or neighborhood?
Have you ever felt oppressed? When? Where? How?
Have you ever led a guided tour with someone of a different class, age or place so she could come to appreciate your original neighborhood?

The SHORES: LAND’S END

Do you usually say YES or NO when asked to serve in a leadership role? Why or why not?
When does the fear of looking bad or sounding stupid keep you from speaking up?
How might you rebalance a situation of power-over with someone in a position of authority? What might a power-with situation look like?
Do you like the feeling of blood rushing to your head, making everything heightened and fast and wild? Why or why not?
What role has the public library played in your intellectual development?

The HILLS: STEEP CLIMBS

Tell about a time you challenged authority or witnessed others doing so.
Tell about someone you consider a saint? Describe why…
Tell about your experience with spiritual-practice circles.
Tell about someone you know personally who speaks truth with love.
Tell about something that triggers your animosity, maybe aggression.

The PRESIDIO: TRAIPSING

For you, is Holy Communion a revered sacrament, an occasional liturgical experience, a paradox, a sacred mystery or something else?
For you, is heresy a holy truth, an outmoded concept, a way to separate insiders from outsiders, or something else?
For you, is aggression your first response, a rare but useful form of expression, avoided most of the time, abhorrent or something else?
For you, which person or situation irritates you like a thorn in the flesh? We aren’t sure what Paul meant by the metaphor; what’s true for you?
For you, what emotions rise when you read of a modern woman giving herself a penance or setting out to become a connoisseur of pain?

The BRIDGES: CONNECTING

What did you hunger for when you were a teen? And these days?
What did you do to ground yourself when you were young? Now?
What happens when people share food? How does eating together nourish emotional connections and deepen relationships between folks?
What might happen if more transgender folks had a place at the table?
What connection do you see between the Beacons’ total acceptance of her and Paige’s capacity to be merciful toward Rev Ruth?

The TENDERLOIN: LURES

Have you had personal experience with someone who was lured into the sex trade? Tell what you heard, felt, wanted, said or did…
Describe any links and/or tensions you might have experienced between your own emerging sexuality and your developing spirituality.
What delights you about San Francisco’s Night Ministry? Discomforts you?
How does your own faith community respond to the needs of those who are trapped in prostitution? Poverty? Madness?
Does your town have a Safe House? Do you see the need for one?

The VALLEYS: SHADOWS

How is your view of Holy Communion affected when you envision it as Rev Ruth and the Beacons do, as a sacrament of feeding?
Have you ever had a crush on someone? Were you aware of God’s Presence with you during the crush, after it was over, now, or never?
Have you ever had cancer? Describe your awareness of God during your illness. Did your connection with Sacred Presence change after cancer?
Have you noticed the little phrase AS IT IS midway through The Lord’s Prayer? What might it mean to you now? In the future?
Have you ever offered your traumatic memories to Creation for healing? What happened?

The AVENUES: PASSAGES

Have you ever feared you were losing your mind? Say more…
Nobody likes everyone. Is there one neighbor, one person at church or at work toward whom you feel a puzzling sense of aversion?
When have the blues swept over you, and how did you get through it?
Imagine yourself yourself sitting in the tableau, silently embodying one of the Twelve Madonnas. What are you wearing? Feeling? Wanting?
Have you ever organized a rummage sale or shopped at one? How do you feel about hearing You can’t put a price tag on love, but you can charge a fair price for the accessories?

The MISSION: ANIMATION

Have you ever been blessed by a great kindness, a kind of sunlight?
Ever had an intensely lucid moment, a sudden solution to a dilemma? Some call this ‘women’s intuition.’ How do you name it?
Have you ever observed someone near and dear, wavering on the edge of cognitive diminishment? Tell about it…
Have you ever repeated the name of Jesus to connect with the mysterious power of love embodied in this frail scrap of language?
Have you ever sensed the gravitational pull of love while listening to someone’s truth?

The PIERS: SUPPORTS

Imagine yourself at the bedside of a loved one, someone who has not yet decided whether to stay alive. What do you say? Do? Want?
Imagine yourself cleaning house in a flurry of righteous indignation. What do you think? Feel? Want?
How does angry aggression, when expressed to a trusted person in a safe setting, restore vitality for females?
How does voluntary withdrawal from everyday responsibilities help women gain perspective and renew inner strength? Can the same benefits come through involuntary withdrawal?
If power is the capacity to move and be moved in relationship, how does Rev Ruth’s illness change power dynamics among the Beacons?

The BEACH: CURRENTS

When have you had to put pieces of a challenging situation together without knowing the whole picture?
Do you believe it’s possible to have a soul connection with someone who has died? Have you ever received a bit of ancestral guidance?
What do you see, hear and feel when you witness flights of expressive imagination in others? How does expressive imagination happen for you?
Have you ever gone through a dark night of the soul, a cloudy evening of the soul, or a spiritual rummage sale?
How is being socially isolated similar to, or different from, choosing to live in a contemplative way? Does seeking to be rooted and grounded in Love have anything to do with it?

ASKING WRITERS about The Beacons of Larkin Street

January 18, 2017 By Judith Favor

Working Cover Draft for The Beacons
a new novel
by Judith Favor

Reading connects people;
so does writing.

Writing helps clarify ideas,
keep track of details
and discover hidden meanings.

Expressing our truths with love
connects us—physically, mentally,
emotionally and spiritually—
to our readers
and to our deepest selves.

We read to know we are not alone.

C.S.Lewis

The Beacons of Larkin Street is a Nineteen-Seventies historical novel written by a contemplative feminist great-grandmother, an ordained minister who once pastored a church in San Francisco.

Where do you see contemplative perspectives influencing the stories? Feminist perspectives? Grandmotherly points of view? Ministerly perspectives?

Set in San Francisco, twelve aspects of the City structure the novel. What connections do you see between the human characters and the character of San Francisco?

Tales of The Beacons move between the perspectives of seven women. Do you find the author’s omniscient POV to be confusing, credible, clear, challenging or something else?

If Beka were the sole narrator, the reader would get one singular angle on each character. Do you think Beka’s POV would have strengthened the novel? Why or why not?

If she were the sole voice, Rev Ruth would have told the story very differently. Would you prefer her first-person voice? Why or why not?

Which of Rev Ruth’s difficulties as a first-time pastor give you the greatest insight into her character? The most compassion for her?

How about Beka’s efforts to guide things as Saint Lydia’s Head Beacon?

The seven women have different sexual orientations and diverse attitudes about sexuality and spirituality. Did the author convince you that each is justified in her beliefs and practices? Why or why not?

In Dot and Rev Ruth’s conflict over communion, do you think the resolution took too long, or came too fast? How might you have done it?

Who was your favorite character? What about her intrigued you?

Which scene was your favorite? What made it memorable?

At the end, several story lines are left unresolved. Do you wish the author had resolved the characters’ dilemmas?

Do you think Rev Ruth will live or die? Return to guide St. Lydia’s, or go to Cleveland?

What do you think will become of Paige? Dot? Hope and Millienne? Luz?

Are there other subplots you wonder about?

This is the first in a trilogy. Which dilemmas and storylines do you most want resolved in a sequel?

Review of Wolf Hollow By Lauren Wolk

January 16, 2017 By Judith Favor

Reviewed by Judith Favor December 1, 2016, in Friends Journal

Dutton Children’s Books, 2016
294 pages
$16.99/hardcover; $10.99/eBook

“The year I turned twelve, I learned how to lie. I don’t mean the small fibs that children tell. I mean real lies fed by real fears––things I said and did that took me out of the life I’d always known and put me down hard into a new one.”

In Wolf Hollow, Lauren Wolk introduces a girl who becomes brave and good in the face of something terrible. In 1943, Annabelle lives among people who love her in the hills of rural Pennsylvania, a place she loves. She enjoys a steady life until a dark-hearted girl comes to her hills and changes everything. After Betty punches her and threatens greater hurts, Annabelle finds ways to protect herself and her little brothers by seeking inner guidance.

Toby, a scarred veteran of the first war, lives in the woods nearby. He looks odd and rarely speaks, but Annabelle senses his kindness. She tries to protect Toby from the lying girl who manipulates people into blaming him for the cruelties she has inflicted. Tensions mount when Betty disappears and Toby, suspected of kidnapping her, takes off. As men and dogs search for the missing girl and man, Annabelle searches her conscience and finds courage to speak the truth, a young voice calling for justice.

Lauren Wolk is an award-winning poet and author of the adult novel Those Who Favor Fire. In Wolf Hollow she writes an indelible account of a reflective child who stands strong on behalf of others. Although this compelling story of moral complexity and quiet heroism is marketed to third through seventh graders, I commend it to Friends of all ages, particularly librarians, First Day teachers, parents and grandparents.

To sum up the power of Wolf Hollow, I affirm the view of Julie Strauss-Gabel, President and Publisher of Dutton Children’s Books: “The stories that lay bare the ugliness of our world are also the stories that stay with us. They inspire acts of everyday bravery and turn small voices big.”

Judith Favor also lives in a place she loves, among people at Claremont Monthly Meeting who love her. She looks forward to reading Wolf Hollow to her grandkids and, some fine day, to her first great-grandchild.

Wolf Hollow

Review of Colum McCann’s Trans Atlantic

September 20, 2014 By Judith Favor

TRANS ATLANTIC

By Colum McCann
Random House, New York, 2013
Hardback, 305 pages $27.00

Reviewed by Judith Favor. Published in Friends Journal, September 2014, pp 42-43

I yearn for writing that is transformational, and this beautifully crafted novel met my longing. Colum McCann braids together the passions of publicly acclaimed men – abolitionist former slave Frederick Douglass, WW1 pilots Jack Alcock and Teddy Brown and peacemaker Senator George Mitchell—with the private stories of feisty fictional women. McCann brings his characters to life through exquisite prose, gifting the reader with story lines that arc across the centuries and crisscross the Atlantic, interweaving Irish and American views and values.

Memorable scenes pulse with Quaker testimonies. In 1845 Irish maid Lily Duggan crosses paths with Frederick Douglass whose integrity and commitment to equality inspire her to escape servitude, sail to America and nurse wounded soldiers on a Civil War battlefield. The novel follows her daughter Emily and granddaughter Lottie whose journeys mirror the progress and shape of history. In 1919 they are influenced by two aviators who set course for Ireland, attempting a nonstop trans-Atlantic flight in a bomber they modified for peaceful means, a flight designed to heal the wounds of the Great War.

In 1998 Lottie encounters Senator George Mitchell in Belfast as he labors to negotiate the historic Good Friday Peace Accords. Mitchell granted the author access to his inner reflections, making para bellum a profoundly moving chapter, worthy of repeated readings. Mitchell’s inner light shines through McCann’s poignant portrait of the contemporary peacemaker who embodies simplicity, equality and integrity under intense international public pressure.

TransAtlantic is not a quick read. McCann’s truthful, tender pages invite pauses for deep thinking, remembering past peacemakers and imagining a more simple, just and equitable future. There is so much goodwill, humor and pure life force in every chapter that this book will lift the spirit of Friends and meet the hunger for transformational fiction.

Judith Favor is a member of Claremont Friends Meeting in Southern California.

Literary fiction seeded with Friends’ testimonies feeds her hungry soul.

Silent Voices

September 2, 2014 By Judith Favor

But this is not the story of a life.
It is the story of lives, knit together,
overlapping in succession, rising
again from grave after grave.
Wendell Berry, from “Rising”

From the start, the stories of Leo James Wright and Cordelia Davis Wright were never solely their own, but continuations of lives that began long before they were born. And how did I come to discover what happened to my grandparents in events preceding my birth? Where does such information come from?

A curious child, I learned to listen between the lines when the Grans spoke, guessing at what they were trying to hide. I watched the way they looked at each other, held my breath during false starts and sudden silences. I waited patiently for bits of truth, sensing emotional codes hidden beneath the social ones, wondering what was beyond regret. I tried to imagine a family where it was safe to ask questions and to tell secrets of the heart, but that was not the world in which I grew up. Leo and Cordelia maintained order through silence. As a young adult I wished I could be part of a less frustrating family, one with fewer conflicts and hurts, maybe one that knew how to have fun. Over the decades I’ve come to realize that most of us cannot go out and form the kind of family we think is ideal. I have had to accept being part of a long chain of wary ancestors. No amount of wishful thinking can change that. Now that I am growing old, I have also grown more curious about genealogy and genetics, more interested in the forces of history, economics and DNA that shaped my forbears. I see this happening all over America, people my age getting interested in family history. You’ve got to start where you are, with the ancestors you’ve been given. So I asked the Grans for their stories. Leo and Cordelia obliged, offering their lives in bits and pieces, hints and glances.

Silent in life, the Grans now rest in eternal stillness, but in these pages they do not stay dead. As far as Ancestry.com is concerned, the lives of Leo and Cordelia Wright are a closed book, but I brought them back from the grave by “hearing them into speech” and composing their stories from a combination of intuition and imagination. Family memoir, like fiction, requires the reader to act as if things really happened this way and each act of reading SILENT VOICES brings Leo and Cordelia Wright back to life. Essayist James Wood terms it “an allowable resurrection” in his New Yorker reflection titled “WHY?” He insists that it’s never too late to listen for untold family stories and to put them on record even if the writer wasn’t there when they happened. I would add that it’s never too late for compassion, either. If a grandchild can offer any gift to her ancestors, let it be an allowable resurrection.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT SILENT VOICES

“Silent voices” is a fresh idea, a truth-filled story (almost a long parable) inviting us to really listen to our own families. Judith Wright Favor made the characters real and the times familiar, reawakening details of food, décor and events with my own grandparents. Not only did I enjoy accompanying her grandparents through their lives, I made mental notes of what I might say if ever I set out on the same journey. In the family tree, the seven sections, the reminder that the sheriff is fictional, the influence of dogs and birds, this book modeled a way to write about my own grandparents.

Nan Cooney, Grandmother / Author

I enjoyed Silent Voices because I can envision the people while reading it. I love that about Judith’s writing. I was glad to know more of the story about how her great grandmother ended up in the poor house, the difficult decision her grandfather had to make, how he and her grandmother had to live with that decision, and how it affected their lives. I really look forward to reading more books by this author.

Deb Noll, Pastry Chef

Reading Silent Voices brought to mind my patrician paternal grandparents behind their polished masks, and my maternal grandmother deserted by her philandering husband and left penniless with four young daughters. Here Judith Wright Favor has dared to inhabit her own grandparents and those with whom their lives intersected, vividly describing and giving voice to the loves and losses that impacted their lives. Silent Voices is part memoir, part meditation and part masterful story; I think the author has invented a new genre!

John Denham, Pastoral Counselor, Retired

I was drawn into this story from the beginning. Having previously read The Edgefielders, the thread that kept drawing me along in Silent Voices was the author’s unspoken hope for her grandparents. Near the end Cordelia asks herself “How long does hope live?” then responds “For an eternity.” The Wrights remind me of my grandparents and leads me to reflect on what may be hidden in the crevices of my own family story.

Joan Stock, Spiritual Director

Do you think about your relatives and wonder what experiences shaped them and contributed to their particular personality characteristics? In this engaging story Judith Wright Favor has found a way to understand and develop compassion for her kin. Drawing upon memory, imagination and intuition she gives Leo and Cordelia Wright new life through poignant vignettes in this highly readable memoir.

Judy Leshefka, Meditation Instructor / Psychotherapist

Silent Voices gives a glimpse of the lives of a man and a woman, from their difficult early days, to their coming together in the bloom of young adulthood, to raising their family. The reader is linked to Leo and Cordelia amidst the story of our nation, Depression, WWII and Hiroshima. It is a captivating read.

Peggy Deal Redman, Professor of Education, Emerita

I saw this as a story of redemption, was very caught up in it and read the book in one sitting. I appreciated the author’s desire to speak to the silences and secrets of our lives. Silent Voices is imbued with the person Judith has become, including her spirituality and her understanding of what people do to make meaning from difficult circumstances.

Lynn Rhodes, Seminary Educator

Review: The Sun Does Shine:
How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row