Running on Red Dog Road

February 8, 2016
In this charming, lyrical memoir of growing up in Appalachia, Berkheimer melds anecdotes and religious explorations to explain her rustic upbringing, which was heavily influenced by a radical Pentecostalism. Berkheimer’s voice is captivating, bringing a vast array of strange but thoughtful characters to life: vagabonds, faith healers, farmers, and miners. When young Berkheimer visits a carnival, she discovers a strange world that’s foreign to her West Virginia childhood. The flow of life becomes clearer when her grandparents die; only then does this innocent girl understand that there is a reality beyond the coal mines and the little Pentecostal church where her grandfather preached every other week. Weaving together recollections from relatives, musings on religious knowledge, and personal stories of enlightenment, Berkheimer candidly brings her personality to the page in this incredible journey from naïveté to wide-eyed maturity.

May 1, 2016

Berkheimer's homespun memoir provides a wistful look back at a simpler time. The author grew up in her grandparents' Beckley, WV, homestead during World War II, her widowed mother working in New York City. Their kind, patient Pentecostalism and folksy brand of "gracious plenty" meant "they had enough to be thankful but not so much as to be uppity." This is not the hardscrabble Appalachia of Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle. For Berkheimer, this memoir is nostalgia. The portraits are lovingly remembered as tent meetings filled with soft hymns, pigtails, and picnics on the ground. Even though it's the 1930s and 1940s, the hobos are pleasant and there is money for paper dolls and occasional vacations. VERDICT Berkheimer's family lives plainly, even frugally, and their experience possesses a purity and easiness that doesn't reflect the crush of Depression-era want. An appealing counterbalance to more dreary war-era accounts.--SC

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