What does it mean to come home?
How does a person, or a family, decide to build a home in our frantic, increasingly mobile society? Is it possible to set down genuine roots in a place far from where you grew up? And how is the concept of “home” intertwined with making, and living, a meaningful life?
Christie Purifoy doesn’t answer all these questions in her memoir, Roots and Sky. But she wrestles with them, in honest, lyrical prose.
Roots and Sky is the story of how Christie, her husband, and their four children have made a home at Maplehurst, an old farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania. That journey, like so many worthwhile ones, has been both more difficult and more beautiful than they imagined.
Like me, Christie is a Texas girl who has traveled far from her childhood home: first to Chicago, then to Florida, then eventually to Maplehurst. I nodded my head as I read her words about travel and movement, about the longing to arrive. She wanted a place where she and her family could set down roots, where they could live into the rhythm of the seasons. At Maplehurst, she found a solid foundation – but quickly realized she had underestimated the work of building it up.
I’m back at Great New Books today talking about how much I loved Roots and Sky. Please join me over there to read the rest of my review.
cakes, tea and dreams 