Broken for Good

April 11, 2016
Jones's hopeful memoir explores how the death of her father leads her to life's deeper truths. With brutal honesty and memorable turns of phrase, she explains her struggle to find hope and candidly explores her less-than-noble feelings about the loss. Much of her memory is tied up in place as she recalls spending time lakeside with her family in New York's Finger Lakes region, but at times she overbakes the mundane descriptions of domestic life. Jones's deep desire for her father to know God is poignantly articulated and might provide solace to readers of faith struggling with similarly restless thinking. "Losing Dad has roused hungers in me that might have slept forever. It's curried in me a kind of Cinderella dream: a keen ache for something that lasts." For Jones, the book realizes her need to express the ways God is always present, even in the darkest situations: "presidingânot in the sense that he could take part in fads and fashion, but in the sense that he enjoys perfect kingship. Total reign over every wound, every hurt, just the same as every pleasure." Transparent in her thinking but often playful in her delivery, Jones is a sparkling new voice à la Anne LaMott with that rare ability to speak beauty in the midst of life's dark moments.