Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home

(Paperback, Main)

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Rhoda Janzen had reached a crossroads: she had just hit forty when her brilliant husband of fifteen years left her for a guy he met on Gay.com. In the same calamitous week she was hospitalized in a horrible car accident. With no alternatives, Rhoda decided to pack her bags and head home. into the heart of the Christian sect she had spent years longing to escape.

Rhoda Janzen might be a bad Mennonite, but nonetheless, her parents and their community welcome her back with open arms, strange food and offbeat advice. ('Why not date your first cousin He has his own tractor!') It was in this safe place that Rhoda came to terms with her failed marriage; the desire, as a young woman, to leave her sheltered world behind; and the choices that had both freed and entrapped her.

Reviews

This book is not just beautiful and intelligent, but alsopainfully-- even wincingly -- funny. It is rare that I literally laugh out loud while I'm reading,but Rhoda Janzen's voice -- singular, deadpan, sharp-witted and honest -- slayed me, with audible results. I have a list alreadyof about fourteen friends who need to read this book. I will ""insist ""that they read it. Because simply put, this isthe most delightful memoir I've read in ages.Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love"""This is an intelligent, funny, wonderfully written memoir. Janzen has a gift for following her elegant prose with the perfect snarky aside. If it weren't for the weird Mennonite food, I would like very much to be her friend.Cynthia Kaplan, author of "Why I'm Like This" and "Leave the Building Quickly"

Author Bio

Rhoda Janzen holds a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was the University of California Poet Laureate in 1994 and 1997. She is the author of Babel's Stair,a collection of poems, and her poems have also appeared in Poetry, The Yale Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Southern Review. She teaches English and creative writing at Hope College in Holland, Michigan.