Synopses & Reviews
From acclaimed novelist Darcey Steinke, a luminous, heartbreaking, and thoroughly modern update on the spiritual memoir.
The daughter of a minister and a former beauty queen, Darcey Steinke recalls accompanying her father on sick calls, stopping by the scene of accidents, and holding her own pretend wedding and funeral services. Her father's first church was built from a "church kit" and most of the parishioners worked at the local carnival. As a child, religion soaked all her activities. In Easter Everywhere, Steinke tracks her complex and changing ideas about God and how these ideas were impacted by her mother's nervous breakdown and her father's struggle with his parish before Steinke turned her back on religion, filling the void with club hopping and romantic obsessions. The second half of the memoir details how Steinke, after marriage, becoming a mother and then getting divorced, was able to finally accept her essential ignorance and begin, with the help of a remarkable Episcopal nun, Sister Leslie, the slow process toward a living faith. Easter Everywhere is a rare literary accomplishment, a beautifully crafted, riveting personal story with a huge emotional impact.
Review
"I adore this book. Darcey Steinke beautifully leads us through her lifetime of spiritual seeking, from a childhood spent in the basement of her father's church, through a young adulthood of rebellion, into a mature and profound personal reckoning with the divine. She writes intelligently, honestly, movingly about a subject which is not always easy to address. It's an inspiration." Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
Review
"[T]his book is nothing if not wise. Steinke recognizes that her feelings of spiritual rootlessness have their origin in authority the commanding authority her father wielded when he wore the cloth, and his utter lack of authority when he divested himself of it." New York Times
Review
"Easter Everywhere benefits from the author's fiction-writing background....She drew this atheist reader deep into her devotional tale, seducing with prose that is rich and filling, with images that are startling and deep." Los Angeles Times
Synopsis
The daughter of a minister and a former beauty queen, Darcey Steinke recalls accompanying her father on sick calls, stopping by the scene of accidents, and holding her own pretend wedding and funeral services. Her father's first church was built from a church kit and most of the parishioners worked at the local carnival. As a child, religion soaked all her activities. In Easter Everywhere, Steinke tracks her complex and changing ideas about God and how these ideas were impacted by her mother's nervous breakdown and her father's struggle with his parish before Steinke turned her back on religion, filling the void with club hopping and romantic obsessions. The second half of the memoir details how Steinke, after marriage, becoming a mother and then getting divorced, was able to finally accept her essential ignorance and begin, with the help of a remarkable Episcopal nun, Sister Leslie, the slow process toward a living faith. Easter Everywhere is a rare literary accomplishment, a beautifully crafted, riveting personal story with a huge emotional impact.
Synopsis
Easter Everywhere is a rare literary accomplishment a beautifully crafted, riveting personal story with a huge emotional impact as Steinke chronicles her struggles with a childhood religion and her slow process toward a living faith.
Synopsis
“I became riveted by Steinke's tone, a steady, lovely, hallowed, patient, things-in-themselves hum…[Easter Everywhere is] a delicately wrought little volume…This is a beautiful book.” —New York Times Book Review In this critically beloved and piercing memoir, Darcey Steinke, a ministers daughter, recounts her lifelong struggle to find religion. Though wide-eyed and accepting as a girl, Steinke left the faith in her teenage years; scene by breathtaking scene, she vividly describes the angst, embarrassment, uncertainty, and joy of her decades of on-and-off piety. Emotional, wise, and beautifully crafted, Easter Everywhere is a rare literary accomplishment, a feat of storytelling and personal insight.
About the Author
Darcey Steinke is the author of four novels, two of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her novel Suicide Blonde has been translated into eight languages, and her novel Milk has been translated into four. Her nonfiction has been featured in Vogue, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, Spin, the Boston Review, and the New York Times Magazine. She currently teaches at both Columbia University and New School University in New York City. She lives with her daughter in Brooklyn.