Description:
Tracing his ancestry back 500 years, PNBA book award-winner Robert Clark (Mr. White's Confessions) maps a legacy of religious belief, disbelief, and faith that mirrors his own spiritual quest. Although he speaks to his recent re-entry into the Catholic Church (the original church of his 500-year-old ancestors), Clark has not written a predictable "I once was lost but now I'm found" autobiography. Rather, he examines a familiar English-American religious legacy. "Like my forebears, I have been variously, and sometimes simultaneously, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Puritan, a Transcendentalist, an agnostic, and an atheist," Clark explains in the introduction to the book. Using his own journey of doubt and faith as the narrative framework, Clark weaves in the religious stories of his ancestors. We meet the Clark family members as inquisitors during the rein of Henry VIII, as Puritan settlers, as accusers in witch trails, and as cohorts of Emerson and Thoreau. Clark has great command over his ancestors' stories, his own story, and his story-telling ability. As a result, he has pulled this ambitious autobiography together in a way that is historically informative, consistently entertaining, and personally meaningful. Deftly and often humorously, he helps us see how our ancestors' religious conversions, confusions, and conquests often reflect our own. --Gail Hudson
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