Easter Everywhere: A Memoir

Easter Everywhere is a memoir of writer Darcey Steinke's life as a minster's daughter, and how her faith changed and affected her life.

We start out by reading of a young Steinke who held weddings, funerals and church services for dead animals and neighborhood children, attempting to get closer to God and copy her minister father. Later, as a young adult, she turns to a world of beauty, boyfriends and attempting to fit in. We see her overcome her stutter, go to college, have an abortion,get married, and witness the birth of her daughter. We do hear about her work as a writer, although the book doesn't go into heavy detail about that.

As a fan of her work, I was thrilled to see similarities in her life that s he wrote about in her earlier books. There is a point where she lives in her father's rectory-very similar to Ginger in Jesus Saves. She mentions living out in San Francisco, just as the heroine in Suicide Blonde does, and we also hear about her waitressing in North Carolina just as the main character in Up Through the Water does.

The ending concludes with her rediscovering her faith with the help of a nun, who is far from the typical religious figure Darcey encountered growing up as a young girl.

I highly recommend this book to fans of the author, and for anyone interested in or undergoing a change in their religious beliefs. ( )

So many writers who write midlife memoirs these days, like Kathryn Harrison and Jeanette Walls, have dark, twisted family secrets to spill, and I'll admit that the element of emotional voyeurism is part of what makes reading memoirs fun. Still, it's a nice change to see a memoir that doesn't contain any plot elements that would interest the Lifetime network. Steinke's writing has a clean, fresh-air quality about it, particularly when she's describing her childhood. She's also led an interesting life; she's one of those people who seem to end up in the middle of interesting and unusual cultural moments – in this case the late-sixties Jesus movement and the late eighties New York "club kid" scene. People who've read a few of these memoirs might recognize her father, a bit of a dreamer who's seemingly unable to square his ideals with the realities of family life, from similar books, though Steinke works hard to make him a sympathetic character. The book's ending is a little diffuse than the last chapters of other coming-through-the-fire memoirs, but I'm pretty sure that Steinke considers her spiritual journey to be far from over, and real life can't always be plotted as neatly as most novels, anyway. ( )

Easter Everywhere by Darcy Steinke - a memoir. Darcy's mother is at times suicidal as she contemplates how insecure her life is and Darcy's father flits from job to church and back with a strong conviction but more ideals than focus. My father is a preacher and flawed as any other human but we were lucky (?) that he and my mother considered our whole family as important a calling from God as any other mission. Darcy seems to realize the dysfunction relatively early but seeing it and dragging yourself to health are two different things. ( )

This memoir by Darcey Steinke became sluggish towards the middle, and by the end, I was just skimming to see what became of her. The sections depicting her childhood were vivid and interesting, but I began to lose interest in her religious evolution by the end. The book is reviewed as being about her mother's nervous breakdown, and I was a bit disappointed at how her beauty queen mother was made into a minor character. It needs to be infused with a bit more of a Sedaris-esque quality before people are going to feel compelled to read it. ( )

raised by minister ( )