Dear Reader:

Isn’t it a “joyful experience,” in itself, when we discover a writer whose words flow like a ‘ babbling brook’ over smooth stones… transforming ordinary words into an intoxicating prose?

Erica Bauermeister, author of The School of Essential Ingredients and the Lost Art of Mixing, leaves her earlier cooking themes for a novel about seven women friends who each agree to take on a  daring personal challenge in the upcoming year.

*Now that I think about it….this novel, too, has a similar central/cuisine theme flowing throughout the story….and that is finding our appetite…our hunger… again for life and joy…in the most unusual places and ways.

Like we learned back in our high school English classes…if we are looking for a ‘focus question’ for this novel…it would run along the line of: What would do you with a second chance at life?

The publisher’s introduction to the novel immediately captures the reader’s curiosity.

Having survived a life-threatening illness, Kate celebrates by gathering with six close friends.  At an intimate, outdoor dinner on a warm September evening, the women challenge Kate to start her new lease on life by going white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon with her daughter.

 Kate, however, is reluctant to take the risk.  That is, until her friend Marion proposes a pact: if Kate will face the rapids, each woman will do one thing in the next year that scares her.  Kate agrees, with one provision — she didn’t get to choose her challenge, so she gets to choose theirs.

I immediately identified with Kate, who underwent treatments for breast cancer and once released felt strange being alone with her body again.

(A few months ago…my monthly check-ups were extended from four weeks apart to six weeks. Aren’t we such creatures of habit…as happy as I was with my oncologist’s extension of time between check-ups…there always remains a part of me needing reassurance that “little c” is still sleeping and hasn’t awakened again to come sneaking back in without permission.)

Perhaps the character, Kate, explains it best when she says:

” For the past eighteen months my body had been  the property of others-doctors certainly, but also friends and relatives…Now the medical professionals had declared it hers again, handing it back like an overdue and slightly scuffed library book.”

Since Kate’s challenge, by her college-aged daughter, was pretty physically intense (white-water rafting down the Grand Canyon) the other friends expected similar daring risks…Perhaps climbing mountains, crossing long, dangerous bridges, bicycling across roughed terrain…but when Kate goes to a large glass bowl (on the center table in the den) and pulls out six beach rocks….(to give each participant as a reminder of the year’s challenge)….the first challenge to Caroline (who is stuck and not moving on from a sudden divorce) is to get rid of her ex-husband, Jack’s, books.

*(Caroline realized she would have preferred climbing the mountains.)

And so the year of the challenges begin. Another author, Garth Stein, describes the book this way…. with a thought-provoking comment:

“Moving, touching, wonderfully written; inspiring to read.  Joy for Beginners takes us on the emotional journeys of seven women seeking to transform their lives and proves that sometimes what we really need to inspire us to change is a good, firm shove.”
–Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

The Ya’s all witnessed this transformation in Jackson… and she didn’t even need a “good firm shove” from any of us….just a reassuring hug that we saw her life-altering decision as sound and opportunistic in finding joy in a different location.

So until tomorrow…Remind us Father that joy is the simplest form of gratitude. ( Karl Barth)

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*The light blue chair, in the second cover of the novel, reminds me of my own  ‘computer’ chair….well, it was once my computer chair. It literally broke in half (the seat) one day in the middle of typing my blog post….I wasn’t sure how to interpret that ‘sign’….perhaps I am gaining weight or I need to quit buying whimsical (flimsy) wooden chairs that has a short longevity. Probably a little of both.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away….so I have put all of the books of this author in it and tucked it away in the corner of the room.