Paternity

by James Calvin Schaap

James Schaap has created powerful stories about fathers and their “kids” — big kids, even grown-up ones. Sometimes it’s from the father’s viewpoint, sometimes that of the son or daughter. Always it’s a “reality check,” a yardstick to measure what we know — or don’t know — about our own critical relationships. These vignettes are life lived out in all its joy and tenderness and grief and hard complexity. Some of it is rather harsh stuff; it’s not prettified to meet a certain standard of purity. Happy endings are not a given. Grace is – in ways we always knew and never knew, in ways that unexpectedly satisfy. We want more – because here we have tasted the real thing. Here is “love that will not let us go.”

234 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2001

Reviews

[Chris Nonhof · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters and landscapes are as rich and full as short story allows. Part of my enjoyment in the book is how many stories reflected my life, both as a father and a son (not to mention spending time in both Wisconsin and Iowa as a Christian Reformed Dutchman). My only beef with the book was how appallingly edited it was.