When this Mask of Flesh is Broken: The Story of an American Protestant Family

by David A. Hollinger

In 1921 a Pennsylvania preacher hauled his four teen-agers from a prosperous Pennsylvania farm to a bleak and arid spot on the Saskatchewan prairie. The young people had to cope with unexpected economic devastation, October blizzards, the mental illness of their mother, and the inability of their aloof and inept father to attend to anything other than leading a tiny fellowship of Pietist-Anabaptists. This book tells the story of the foursome's enduring mutual support as each struggled to survive emotionally and materially, and tried to retain fragments of the culture they had absorbed in Gettysburg. One of the four, the father of this book's author, decided at the age of thirty to begin an education so he could become a minister. His siblings supported his journey though adult high school, college, and seminary, but Albert Hollinger, Jr., found the urban society of the early 1950s alien. Unable to function in it as a minister, he became a house-painter. Always haunted by his failure to achieve voice, he took comfort from a poem prophesying confident speech in afterlife, "When this mask of flesh is broken." He and his siblings were all determined to be childless for fear of mental illness, but there was one by accident. This book's author eventually learned that he was the result of an unintended pregnancy. All four came together again in their last decades, living near one another in the church-intensive town in Southern California where the author's father had attended college in the 1930s.

102 pages, Paperback

Published May 22, 2019

About the author

Preston Hotchkis Professor of History (Emeritus)
University of California at Berkeley

One of the pre-eminent intellectual historians in and of the United States.

Past President of the Organization of American Historians (2010-2011); Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; former Guggenheim Fellow, Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, and Harmsworth Professor of the University of Oxford.

Reviews

[Denise Kettering · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this short family biography, Hollinger traces his father's life story. His father, Albert Hollinger, Jr., was born into a Brethren family and his father was a respected elder. His mother, however, suffered from mental illness and spent many years secluded and without speaking to anyone. As a young man, Hollinger relocated with his family to Canada so that his father could assume leadership of the Brethren community in Canada. The years were difficult ones for the family and shaped their relationships for the rest of their lives. He then follows the siblings through their lives to see the long-term effects of this period on their lives. The book is a nice examination of the family dynamics and migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book would be enjoyable for those interested in Brethren or migration history.