Kaethe Schwehn

Family Conscience

History & Biography

“Drawing on detailed interviews, journal entries, letters, and photographs, John Barbour intricately mines his family’s past for clues about how moral conscience develops. From host homes in India to work camps in Germany, this generational memoir investigates the places, events, conversations, and relationships that form our personal understanding of right and wrong. With compassion and curiosity, Barbour eloquently investigates how war, marriage, parenting, suicide, religion, community, and vocation affect the moral dimensions of one family. But Barbour is also acutely aware of the mutability of memory; woven through the book are his interrogations of his own writerly motives and his family’s mixed response to his observations. The result is a lucid, wise, and engaging memoir that offers a moving example of why searching for truth is both a fraught and necessary endeavor.”

The Second Baptism of Albert Simmel

Fiction

“Complete with stampeding buffalo, dirigible duels, meta-Indians, false prophets, and turkey farmers, Clapp's Second Baptism of Albert Simmel is a hero's journey of the highest order. Though the obstacles Al Simmel faces in the Age of the Descent are by turns ribald and surreal, painful and hilarious, Clapp reminds us of what it means to be a Christian on a journey in any age while his graceful language provides us with comfort every step of the way.”