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Soft-Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism
In poetic prose, Forrester navigates leaving a life in one state and picking up in another and repeating the process through various and vast personal, social, and political landscapes. It's a personal story and it's an investigation of change and how we tend to hide away the most valuable parts of ourselves, especially, paradoxically, the parts that help us survive change, the parts that make us Soft-Hearted, and we need more soft-heartedness in all times and in all places.
248 pages, Paperback
Published April 28, 2019
1 person is currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Jenny Forrester
11 books42 followersAuthor photo credit: Intisar Abioto
Colorado Book Awards Finalist, 2020 for Soft Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism. Author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir, 2017, Brilliant: The Art of Literary Radiance, 2025, and Love: The Art of Cherishing the World, 2025.
Colorado Book Awards Finalist, 2020 for Soft Hearted Stories: Seeking Saviors, Cowboy Stylists, and Other Fallacies of Authoritarianism. Author of Narrow River, Wide Sky: A Memoir, 2017, Brilliant: The Art of Literary Radiance, 2025, and Love: The Art of Cherishing the World, 2025.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 1, 2019
An absolutely gorgeous, heart-wrenching book. Forrester goes deep within to uncover her own soft-heart so she can help the rest of us find ours. Written with an unflinching eye toward herself and the world around her, Soft-Hearted Stories reminds us that there is tenderness in this world, and that it's worth fighting for. This book will haunt you (in a good way) and help you remember that kindness and compassion are powerful stances. Lest you think this is a sappy book, it is not. Not one drop of sap. Just the gorgeous razor's edge of life.
April 22, 2020
This book is gentle and deep and beautiful and fragmented and filled with life and grief and elk and chickens and wind and ghosts. Forrester's writing is simple at first, but upon rereading the book (which I did as soon as I finished it) there are layers to discover. Divorce is a painful death, and she discusses the isolation and grief for her readers to heal. The landscape of Colorado is another character here, and I hope that this writer continues to share her observations with her readers in many books. I want the next one already.
August 8, 2019
I devoured this book while in the woods in front of a fire. It felt like a close friend sitting beside me, telling me their stories, struggles, and questions. Not the day-to-day, but the raw, vulnerable beauty of being alive in this world right now. With each short, tender chapter, I was reminded of how essential it is to dwell in the soft spots rather than hide and harden them. We are often our best in those spaces and we need to rest in them more and more.
June 25, 2021
Forrester writes about change, survival, and community in these spare, lyrical vignettes. As the title suggests, there's a softness that surrounds the passages in this book, yet Forrester doesn't shy away from the hard conversations, whether it's confronting others or having to confront herself. With compassion and transcendent grace, she looks directly into heartache, grief, and inequality, and shows how sometimes love means sitting in the discomfort long enough to learn from it. Calm and confident, Forrester clears a path for healing through words. We are lucky to have this book in the world.
December 31, 2019
This book is rather different but kept me reading.
April 22, 2021
Forrester is a brilliant writer, but this book contains lies I can no longer keep quiet about. Lies about me. Misrepresentations.
I will quote the passage.
“You find out, though, some things about joy and I’ll speak in metaphor and mixed-up-ness to protect myself from slander, but the truth is that everyone’s eyes are filled with sticks and words are stones and a woman who says she’s an orphan has married, rich parents in San Francisco who welcome her with open arms, you find out, all while she’s telling everyone else on social media she has nothing and no one and a woman who says she’s a shepherd on her family’s organic mulit-generational family farm says she’s been legally homeless for six years during that same period of time and no one calls any of them to task. No one. Not even me.”
I have no idea who the “woman from San Francisco” is, but the other woman is me. To clarify the “mixed-up-edness” Forrester uses do explain away slander, I will make things clear.
1- I moved to a family farm outside Portland in 2010 from Las Vegas and lived there with no lease for several years with my family. In a conversation, we discussed issues surrounding the definitions of homelessness. I was not houseless, but by definition I was homeless. I’m not sure what there is to call out. We were living in poverty at the time I met Forrester, and as we worked together on her Unchaste Readers series, she was intimate with my situation. During this time, she was not yet divorced she was comfortably situated in terms of finance.
2 - I did not claim to be a shepherdess (dismissive gendered word) but I did grow flowers and keep bees. Again, I fail to see what there is to call out.
3 - it was not a “multi-generational” farm. The farm had recently been acquired, through hard work and dedication by a woman of color and her now ex-husband.
4 - Forrester apparently feigned support for my family, myself, my imperfections, my struggles and even my choices.
I can no longer let this fester in me. I do not see what there was to call out here, besides petty lies.
We were all learning and growing at the time, and there was plenty of behavior to call out, but instead, Forrester picked on a family in poverty and a fledgling farm newly owned by a woman of color. Her attempt at mixed-up-edness was not well executed and I’ve had too many people bring this passage to my attention not to be brave enough to set this record straight. We were all learning and growing, but with this book and lack of compassion within, I believe Forrester had as far to go as a hawk from the moon.
DRG
I will quote the passage.
“You find out, though, some things about joy and I’ll speak in metaphor and mixed-up-ness to protect myself from slander, but the truth is that everyone’s eyes are filled with sticks and words are stones and a woman who says she’s an orphan has married, rich parents in San Francisco who welcome her with open arms, you find out, all while she’s telling everyone else on social media she has nothing and no one and a woman who says she’s a shepherd on her family’s organic mulit-generational family farm says she’s been legally homeless for six years during that same period of time and no one calls any of them to task. No one. Not even me.”
I have no idea who the “woman from San Francisco” is, but the other woman is me. To clarify the “mixed-up-edness” Forrester uses do explain away slander, I will make things clear.
1- I moved to a family farm outside Portland in 2010 from Las Vegas and lived there with no lease for several years with my family. In a conversation, we discussed issues surrounding the definitions of homelessness. I was not houseless, but by definition I was homeless. I’m not sure what there is to call out. We were living in poverty at the time I met Forrester, and as we worked together on her Unchaste Readers series, she was intimate with my situation. During this time, she was not yet divorced she was comfortably situated in terms of finance.
2 - I did not claim to be a shepherdess (dismissive gendered word) but I did grow flowers and keep bees. Again, I fail to see what there is to call out.
3 - it was not a “multi-generational” farm. The farm had recently been acquired, through hard work and dedication by a woman of color and her now ex-husband.
4 - Forrester apparently feigned support for my family, myself, my imperfections, my struggles and even my choices.
I can no longer let this fester in me. I do not see what there was to call out here, besides petty lies.
We were all learning and growing at the time, and there was plenty of behavior to call out, but instead, Forrester picked on a family in poverty and a fledgling farm newly owned by a woman of color. Her attempt at mixed-up-edness was not well executed and I’ve had too many people bring this passage to my attention not to be brave enough to set this record straight. We were all learning and growing, but with this book and lack of compassion within, I believe Forrester had as far to go as a hawk from the moon.
DRG
December 2, 2025
Found this while volunteering at the library, figured i would give it a chance because it was short, the cover caught my eye, and i’ve been trying to read more from 818.
I don’t think the author is accomplishing what she wanted to. I’m reminded of that genre of white women on instagram who took too many shrooms and think we can solve all the worlds problems through hugs, gentleness, taking everyone as they are and so on. A small but obvious example from the book is her acknowledging and then passively allowing her male friend’s sexist beliefs, all while vaguely alluding to or complaining about the “oppressive patriarchy” throughout the book. You can be gentle and still hold people accountable !! And there’s a place for softheartedness, sure, but maybe, at a certain point, we should stop extending unconditional acceptance to people who suck, all because “they are human beings too”. She also does constantly reference haters on instagram (might as well have just said the words “social justice warriors”, since it’s in line with her tone), which just reads as a bitter old person yelling about the “woke mob”. I don’t know why she was embedding political commentary within the failed marriage framing to begin with, because she didn’t really explore either by the end. It seems like she was scared of committing to taking any meaningful or productive stance on the many political issues she referenced (or maybe not equipped to), but wasn’t ready for the vulnerability of writing about her interpersonal relationships either. I think she should have focused the latter.
Did not enjoy reading it at all. Maybe the writing style just isn’t for me, or I’m missing something, because I did read it in one sitting. I tried to find reviews to see if I was crazy or not, but there isn’t much out there. Would not recommend it myself.
I don’t think the author is accomplishing what she wanted to. I’m reminded of that genre of white women on instagram who took too many shrooms and think we can solve all the worlds problems through hugs, gentleness, taking everyone as they are and so on. A small but obvious example from the book is her acknowledging and then passively allowing her male friend’s sexist beliefs, all while vaguely alluding to or complaining about the “oppressive patriarchy” throughout the book. You can be gentle and still hold people accountable !! And there’s a place for softheartedness, sure, but maybe, at a certain point, we should stop extending unconditional acceptance to people who suck, all because “they are human beings too”. She also does constantly reference haters on instagram (might as well have just said the words “social justice warriors”, since it’s in line with her tone), which just reads as a bitter old person yelling about the “woke mob”. I don’t know why she was embedding political commentary within the failed marriage framing to begin with, because she didn’t really explore either by the end. It seems like she was scared of committing to taking any meaningful or productive stance on the many political issues she referenced (or maybe not equipped to), but wasn’t ready for the vulnerability of writing about her interpersonal relationships either. I think she should have focused the latter.
Did not enjoy reading it at all. Maybe the writing style just isn’t for me, or I’m missing something, because I did read it in one sitting. I tried to find reviews to see if I was crazy or not, but there isn’t much out there. Would not recommend it myself.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 21, 2024
This book is so gorgeous. First of all, it's visually gorgeous, almost hard to get over its physical beauty. Then there's the writing, the lyrical, wonderful inside (storytelling, language, heart) which is even more gorgeous than the outside. I didn't want it to end. I need to read it again soon. Here's one of so many parts that I loved:
p. 180:
“I held it up between us.
A copy of The Certificate. The year of the dissolution is plain. Stamped official.
I smothered the lit gas coming from your dragon mouth, your Titan Mind with the certificate.
But you said you didn’t taste any gas, and denied you’d ever lit anything on fire and you flew off seeking some other thing to burn, to turn.
That look in your eye you get. No one can do anything but run when you get like that.
I put the certificate on the mangle to remind myself that my eyes see and my memory remembers.
I remember all those certificates that generations of my family kept and understand something about certificates and pieces of paper and I make a note of it, writing it down for safekeeping.”
p. 180:
“I held it up between us.
A copy of The Certificate. The year of the dissolution is plain. Stamped official.
I smothered the lit gas coming from your dragon mouth, your Titan Mind with the certificate.
But you said you didn’t taste any gas, and denied you’d ever lit anything on fire and you flew off seeking some other thing to burn, to turn.
That look in your eye you get. No one can do anything but run when you get like that.
I put the certificate on the mangle to remind myself that my eyes see and my memory remembers.
I remember all those certificates that generations of my family kept and understand something about certificates and pieces of paper and I make a note of it, writing it down for safekeeping.”
December 12, 2022
I began reading this book late one night when I couldn't sleep. I couldn't put it down and picked it up again immediately when I awoke the next morning. The stories in it are so real - I could FEEL them. They comforted me in the best way, and I continued to read it late at night and early in the morning, as if the book was just too magical to be read in any times not as intimate as those. There were pages I read twice, for the second time out loud, as the words were too beautiful to not be spoken. There is this balance of pain and comfort, loneliness and presence that was just perfect for me.
December 10, 2022
Soft hearted and diminutive in size, it’s actually powerful and large in scope for writers mining their pasts, searching memory and writing their stories. It is serving as reference as muse for me. Jenny Forrester writes well, we know that, but more importantly, she understands writers. This book proves that.
March 1, 2024
Jenny Forrester's Soft-Hearted Stories is lyrical, magical, and oh-so-necessary. It's a poetic manifesto I return to often for its fierce-hearted beauty. Forrester's way with language makes this book a powerful, gorgeous work of art.
August 12, 2021
“The voices in the outside world still break my heart and I break theirs and it’s a breaking time the way war always is and it’s always war.”
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews