Pilgrim Interrupted

by Susan Cushman

The title essay in this collection, “Pilgrim Interrupted,” is set on the island of Patmos, Greece, during one of Susan’s pilgrimages with her husband, Father Basil Cushman, an Orthodox priest. Pilgrimages. Orthodoxy. Icons. Monasteries. It’s all in here. But so are stories about mental health, caregiving, death, family, and writing, including a section on “place,” a key element in Southern literature. And how is Susan’s pilgrimage “interrupted”? By life itself. Pilgrim Interrupted is a collection of 35 essays, 3 poems, and 5 excerpts from Susan’s novels and short stories. Coming of age during the turbulent 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi; marrying young and adopting three children; leaving the Presbyterian Church of her childhood for the Eastern Orthodox Christian faith in 1987; Susan finally began to chronicle her journey in the early 2000s. Pilgrim Interrupted is her eighth book.

Genres: Memoir

250 pages, Paperback

Published June 7, 2022

About the author

Cushman's eighth book, "Pilgrim Interrupted," releases June 7 , 2022. Her seventh book, "John and Mary Margaret," was published June 8, 2021.

Susan's sixth book, a collection of linked short stories titled "Friends of the Library," was published by Koehler Books in August, 2019. Her third anthology, "The Pulpwood Queens Celebrate 20 Years!," was published in December, 2019.

Susan's first novel, "Cherry Bomb," released in July 2017. Her first book, "Tangles and Plaques: A Mother and Daughter Face Alzheimer's," was released in January 2017. She was also editor of "A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be," (March 2017) and "Southern Writers on Writing," (University Press of Mississippi, May 2018.) Susan has essays published in over 10 journals and magazines and four anthologies.

Susan was co-director of the 2010 and 2013 Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conferences, and Director of the 2011 Memphis Creative Nonfiction Workshop. She lives in Memphis where she loves leading a writing workshop at a senior living facility and volunteering for Room in the Inn, which provides food and shelter for the homeless.

Reviews

[Marsha Raasch · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself” - Miles Davis
This quote resurfaced while I was reading this book and seemed to fit.
Starting with faith, icons, monasteries and Eastern Orthodoxy, this series of vignettes, essays, impressions, stories and poetry veers into the complications of "family"; art, writing, and writers; dives into addiction, sexual abuse, eating disorders, and other distractions while always guided by faith, truth, and hope.
Watching a person become themselves, watching an artist find their medium, and a writer find their voice : this book is for you if you find the process as illuminating and fascinating as I do.

[Rebecca Rosenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

PILGRIM INTERUPTED is A Road Less Traveled. Cushman recalls the fascinating and intimate journey through her life with extraordinary wisdom. The stories she shares ask the important questions of who we are, who our people are, what we really want out of life, and what our purpose is. This unexpected work is unvarnished, uniquely illuminating, and inspiring to find our own answers to why our lives have unfolded as they have, and what we have learned from this extraordinary journey.

[Mimi]

While I know the author - and the next time that I see her, I hope to get her autograph on this copy - I bought the book myself, so no disclosure needed :) A beautifully written collection of essays - about faith, writing, healing from abuse, adoption. I read it a bit at a time (while brushing my teeth,) and was always curious to come back to it.

[Claire Fullerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

You'll savor every essay in Susan Cushman's Pilgrim Interrupted. The essays are wise, beautiful, soulful, insightful, as opposed to confessional. They strike the perfect pitch that hooks the reader's attention, lures them in, and keeps them authentically engaged. What strikes me most about Pilgrim Interrupted is its lack of pomposity. These are thoughts spun to gold in a manner so artfully subtle as to make the reader care about the writer, even as they are prompted to reflect on their own interpretations of existential concerns such as commitment, perseverance, spiritual meaning, and the beauty to be found in life's seeming little things. This is a collection of essays to read slowly-- many you'll want to return to again. Author Susan Cushman shares a piece of her intelligent, soft-spoken heart in Pilgrim Interrupted, and you'll be grateful that she has done so, for all the impactful resonance of what adds up to a series of deeply moving experiences.

[JoAnna McGarvie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Lovely prose and verse melodiously written of Faith and a womens journey home .

[Corinne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A well written Memoir. The author really shares herself, in honest detail.

[A.R. Gaspard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I laughed with this book and I cried with this book. I can not underestimate the power of an Essay and a beautiful poem. Susan Cushman has wonderfully compiled both.