Passport

I am a pretty busy person -- farming, running 2 consultancies, and homeschooling 3 kids -- and I have very little time for fiction. I ordered this book on someone else's recommendation, and I was drawn (sucked?) in immediately. Talk about riveting -- to say this book is a page-turner is an understatement. This book ramps up quickly and does not disappoint -- even from page one, it's tremendous.The other reviews were intriguing, particular one that is "less than gushing." Did this guy have a case against this book? I tend to have no patience for fluff, nor do I appreciate lockstep, so I was interested to see whether that reviewer had any viewpoints with which I could concur.My first reaction, having finished the book and spent just a bit of time processing its complex themes, is that it is singularly the most intellectually honest book I have ever read.Many of my "comfy themes" appear in this book -- homeschooling, attachment parenting, and NFP all make appearances. I *do* homeschool, and we quasi-attachment-parent. So I like these themes, especially when I'm discussing them with like-minded friends. That said, I am always on the lookout for "because I said so" Catholics who can offer no reasonable defense of their beliefs, choices and behaviors. The last thing I want to do is make faith look like a freak show. I mean, I don't want to belong to an organization that has the slightest tendency toward the cultish. When I saw that the other reviewer thought some of these cultural elements were presented in caricature, I was concerned. Did the author really just dump a laundry list of conservative Catholic principles into a preachy, nauseating tome?I am excited to say, absolutely not! Remember the discussions about religion and philosophy you used to have in college? Those are the kinds of conversations the characters in this book have. The characters are thoughtful. Is that really so unusual? The characters try to do the right thing. Don't we all? The characters forge lasting friendships, and encounter reasons to "forgive and forget." Sounds like the stuff we try to teach grade school children -- and the stuff most adults are still trying to master. The characters are trying to figure out how to be good parents -- I'm sure parents who are reading this relate to that struggle. The characters make hard choices -- harder than any decision I've ever had to make.It's not caricature, or cliche, but real life. The setting and specifics might be foreign to some, but the themes are universal.There is an old adage that God writes straight with crooked lines. (The line actually comes up in the book.) This book tells a story that illustrates this very point.To that point, throughout the book, I had a bunch of reactions to the main character, who narrates the story in the first person. I wanted to yell at him: Run away! Get out! Don't tell her! How can you be so pigheaded? Be a father, will you please? Think before you talk! Patience, man!And one last point: How brave are you? How willing are you to put your money where your mouth is? How much could you give to those you love, even if there is a chance you will get nothing in return? This book is not just about dating and unplanned pregnancies and abortion and divorce. It's about character and chivalry and honesty ... and love. Not what MTV and Oprah tell you love is, but the real meaning of love. The old fashioned kind -- the kind you receive from selfless, generous people.This book is amazing -- I have never read a book like it.

I read about this book on Catholic Fire (and who knows how I surfed onto that) and decided to order it. I mean if a Catholic reader like me won't buy this kind of book, why should anyone write it, right? I really wish I could write a gushingly great review of it, but I can't.First the good: It is a story that kept me engaged throughout the book.Now the bad: The author can't seem to decide if he is writing a novel or teaching a religion class. He makes sure that every cliche' of conserative Catholicism made it into the book at one place or another. The main character prefers the old church with classical lines to modern ones. His spiritual director is a young, cassock-wearing Opus Dei priest. Most of the main characters met at Catholic Youth Day in Denver. NFP is discussed. There is a family with quite a few young kids with a homeschooling SAHM. Of course they say the rosary as a family nightly. Moms all breastfeed and attachment parenting and slings are big. In several spots in the book the characters are discussing religion, but IMO it comes off as phony.What is the story? It is told through the eyes of a non-Cafeteria Catholic young man. It is mainly the story of his relationship with the mother of his child. It is also the story of his relationship with his best friend from college, who is now an organic farmer, married, with lots of kids. The friend's wife is the SAHM of course. Another main character is another college buddy who is your basic "typical" guy of that age who is living with his girlfriend and not really growing up. It is the story of an overaged adolescent who had to grow up in a hurry--and did. It is a story of self-sacrificing love.In a lot of ways, I'm disappointed because this could have been a much better book with better editing. It almost seemed like the author had a list of points of doctrine or Catholic moral teachings that he wanted to include in the book, and after he outlined the story, he plugged them in. Some of the Catholic stuff seemed to be there just for the sake of putting it there--like when it mentioned that he always prayed for his parents as he passed the cemetery. That's nice, but so what? It really had nothing to do with the story, and there were plenty of other keys to his Catholic identity.I found most of his characters to be too good to be true. I found many of the faith elements of the book to be preachy and not well-integrated into the story and the premise of the story wasn't very realistic either. Basically, the couple gets pregnant and then married civilly (and chastely) to take care of the baby. There is one hurdle after another to a Church wedding, the last of which is her inabilty to get her previous marriage annulled, and based on the little I know about annullments and what the author said about her marriage, an annullment, in real life, would have been granted. If you are Catholic and like what I call fluffy Christian fiction, you may like this book, and I'd suggest giving it a try if for no other reason that to encourage the author and others like him to write more Catholic fiction.