memoir

Review: Night of the Fireflies

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Cover image of "The Night of the Fireflies" by Muriel Elmer.

Night of the Fireflies

Night of the Fireflies, Muriel Elmer. Independently published (ISBN: 9798196399244) 2026.

Summary: A memoir of growing up as a Missionary Kid with her widowed mother in Zimbabwe, both painful and formative.

I grew up hearing stories like these from missionaries who visited our church. And there was a period of time during and after college when I read a number of missionary biographies. But I never read an account of a “missionary kid.” From the few MKs I met, their story was usually less glorious than the ones I read. And it has been too long since I’ve read any such accounts. That is, until Muriel Elmer’s memoir of growing up as a child of missionaries in Africa came along.

Trained in nursing, she has directed relief efforts for children, taught nursing, and educational studies. I interviewed her several years on a book she co-authored, titled The Learning Cycle. So it was a pleasure to hear from her again, and even more to read this account of her early life. She recounts her childhood at a mission station in Msengedzi in the Zambezi Valley of present-day Zimbabwe up through when she enrolled in nursing studies at Wheaton College, spanning a period from 1942 to 1958.

Rudy and Mary Danielson heard a call from God to go to Africa and departed for there in 1942, along with their toddler, Muriel. Working with another couple, Orv and Helen Dunkeld, who would play an important role in Muriel’s life, they established the mission station. But Rudy died just a year later, in November of 1943. Muriel recounts their trip back to the States in 1944, on a blacked out ship during the war, evading enemy submarines. When the war ended, Mary and Muriel returned.

The years after their return were magical, though challenging. The Dunkeld’s boys were co-adventurers with her. She describes encounters with baboons, the rains, and a unique experience one night of fireflies invading their hut. But the magic years did not last as her mother made the decision to send her to boarding school. In addition to a cruel housemother came the cost of fitting in, the beginnings of struggles with self-doubt and shame her mother never quite grasped.

Eventually, she moved to another school and stayed in a home with the Dunkeld family and several others. This was a healing contrast to her earlier boarding school experiences. But her experiences and that of living in three different cultures left her wondering who she was. The latter part of the memoir traces her growing understanding of God’s working in her life amid a troubled childhood. She writes:

“And so, as I think about the circle of my life, it is like a set of pearls on a string. Each pearl represents yet another strange place where a gracious God has designed new experiences, each adding to my perspective and my character in the service of others. Those cross-cultural relational skills so unconsciously bred into me as a child became my gifts to build his Kingdom.”

She describes her mother’s work of teaching and sometimes basic medical care as well as the mission community of which they were a part–both the precious friendships and the losses. During her teen years, she grew deeper in her faith, especially under the influence of the Dunkelds. She also had a growing sense that she needed to pursue nursing training. This resulted in the decision to finish her high school training at Wheaton Academy before going on to nursing training.

The narrative describes mission work embedded among people, learning from them and serving them and gaining their trust. It contrasts with accounts of Western missions as imperialist and colonial efforts. Elmer addresses this specifically in an epilogue, citing the research of Robert Woodberry showing countries with mission presence were more economically developed, had better health care, lower corruption and higher educational attainments.

Elmer writes this memoir in a way that imparts a sense of the wonder, the pain, and growing self-understanding she experienced. She writes honestly about difficulties and shortcomings. She also profiles godly women and men of great integrity, courage, and humility. And she traces the gracious workings of God in her own life from this childhood to her life today.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.

Review: Working with My Heroes

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Cover image of "Working with My Heroes" by John DeMain and Greg Hettmansberger

Working with My Heroes

Working with My Heroes, John Demain and Greg Hettmansberger. University of Wisconsin Press (ISBN: 9780299352202) 2026.

Summary: A memoir by Madison Symphony Orchestra’s director, tracing his mentors from Youngstown to the greats of American music.

His parents recognized his musical gifts at age three when he would join the women’s choir at Mt. Carmel Italian Church to sing the benediction hymns. Now in his eighties, John DeMain, music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra for 32 years, has had an incredible life in music, which he recounts in this memoir, co-authored with the late Greg Hettmansberger, who died in a tragic auto accident in 2020. DeMain narrates his life while Hettmansberger provides researched background material. The demarcate their respective contributions in different typefaces.

Together, they trace his life from his childhood in Youngstown, Ohio, his training at Juilliard, his decision to conduct and early experiences, culminating with work with the Houston Grand Opera (HGO). In 1996, they staged the first production of George Gershwin’s complete score of Porgy and Bess, winning a Grammy Award for the recording. Leonard Bernstein told DeMain that this was the Porgy and Bess production that he had waited forty years to hear. It led to work with Bernstein, premiering A Quiet Place and with John Adams, premiering Nixon in China, in 1987. In 1994, when the HGO fell into financial troubles, DeMain realized a longing for symphonic conducting and pursued a position with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, believing Madison a good place for he and his wife Barbara to raise their young daughter.

DeMain has led the Madison Symphony Orchestra since then, recently stepping down as music director. He continues to direct the Madison Opera. During that time, he has led the Orchestra to take huge leaps in professionalism, enjoyed broad community support and engagement with the community, and opened a new performing arts center. All this and more is detailed in an informative and highly entertaining narrative. He includes stories of playing piano at a mob wedding and personal insights into many of the luminaries with whom he worked.

As a fellow Youngstown native, I enjoyed learning of the role Youngstown played in his development. He had gifted piano teachers, Hermann and Blanche Gruss. His first mentor was the founding conductor of the Youngstown Symphony, Michael Ficocelli. As his fourth grade music teacher, he taught him conducting and he filled in when Ficocelli couldn’t be there. At age nine, he soloed in Amahl and the Night Visitors with the Youngstown Playhouse. Eventually, he became dance rehearsal accompanist for a Playhouse production of Paint Your Wagon, mentored by music director Lillian Butcher Stambaugh. Then, he served as musical director of Brigadoon for the Playhouse as a high school freshman. A benefactor, Lawrence Lawler, recognizing his gifts, took him to see a touring company of the Metropolitan Opera in Cleveland.

All this culminated in entering the Youngstown Symphony’s concerto competition in 1961. Going up against more highly trained competition, including a Juilliard student, he won, opening the door for him to study at Julliard. During and after his time at Juilliard, He worked with John Kenley’s summer stock productions. Through Kenley, he learned to care for touring stars, culminating with opera great Giorgio Tozzi in Man of La Mancha. [I saw that production on a date in high school!]

DeMain not only chronicles his work with heroes like Jorge Mester at Juilliard, Julius Rudel at the New York City Opera, and Bernstein. He also takes us behind the scenes of various productions, both the technical and personal challenges. He describes his working relationship with various soloists and his flexibility in working with singers. For Porgy, he became a learner, learning from Black performers the southern religious culture behind the spirituals in the full version. Implicit in his account of the Madison years, I sense the community itself has been one of his heroes.

Don’t skip DeMain’s Afterword, “Some Notes for Conductors and Thoughts on the Future.” This is a concise but illuminating distillation of his philosophy of conducting. He also offers his own, mostly optimistic, reflections on the future of classical music.

DeMain and Hettmansberger collaborated seamlessly. Hettmansberger’s background material flows into DeMain’s storytelling without being disjointed. Thus, the book combines scholarly biography with engaging memoir.

Several years ago, I had the privilege to do a Zoom interview with Maestro DeMain for a blog article in my “Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown” series. It was a delightful hour, but I sensed that there was so much more we could have talked about. This book, while not exhausting the stories he could tell, gave me so much more. He portrayed his deep and ever-fresh love of all kinds of music. He captures the delight of working with composers, soloists, and musicians to bring that music to life. And in talking about his heroes, he reminds us of the village of people who formed each of us.

Review: The Know-It-All

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Cover image of "The Know-It-All" by A.J. Jacobs

The Know-It-All

The Know-It-All, A. J. Jacobs. Simon & Schuster (ISBN: 9780743250627) 2005.

Summary: A memoir of reading the 32 volume 2002 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.

Many of us readers may not openly admit it, but secretly, we harbor the “know-it-all” dreams of A.J. Jacobs. We read voraciously, hoping to edge closer to knowing as much as we can about everything. Of course, this is a case of our reach exceeding our grasp. And most of us eventually settle for just being life long learners.

Perhaps Jacobs may be excused. He comes from a family of know-it-alls. His father held the record for the most footnotes in a law review article (5,435) and had also attempted to read the Encyclopedia Britannica. He got through the Bs. He also had a true know-it-all brother-in-law. Eric, who bested him in every conversation. Jacobs was pursuing a career in journalism, writing for Entertainment Weekly, and eventually Esquire. This afforded him a lot of knowledge of popular culture, but he felt all the learning of college slipping away. And so he landed on the project of reading through the 32 volumes of the 2002 Encyclopedia Britannica, from A-ak to Zywiec (a village in Poland).

Needless to say, his wife Julie, and most of the others thought it a bit crazy. And it got annoying when he injected strange facts and usually useless information into their lives, or worse, into their social gatherings. But what’s the value of being a know-it-all if you can’t show it?

The book is organized into an A to Z summary of his reading. We learn lots of interesting tidbits. For example, before vinaigrette was a salad dressing, it served as a deodorant in the eighteenth century. And A-ak? It’s a term referring to ancient East Asian music, explained more fully if you “see gagaku.” One might say, Jacobs read the Encyclopedia so we don’t have to, summarizing 33,000 pages in 400.

But there is so much more. Fancying himself a genius, he tries to join Mensa. It turns out he qualified based on his college entrance exam and a good thing, too. He miserably failed the Mensa test. But in the Mensa gatherings he generally found himself out of their league. Then there are the attempts to get onto game shows. Turns out an earlier interview with Alex Trebek disqualified him from competing. However, he manages to get onto Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Turns out he stumbles on something he read about back in the Es: erythrocytes. What component of blood are they. It turns out his brilliant brother-in-law Eric is also clueless and he ends up guessing wrong. The answer: red blood cells. So all that reading adds up to $1000 and an interesting story.

He discovers that reading the encyclopedia is a losing battle with memory. Conversations with an expert on intelligence suggest that the learning in encyclopedias is only one kind of intelligence, and perhaps not the most useful in every day life. But he is inspired by a visit to the Encyclopedia Britannica offices, where he even contributes some corrections! So what does he learn? In addition to a lot of great Scrabble words, he glimpses both the awful messes and the huge achievements of humankind. The achievements give him hope. And perhaps the article on Ecclesiastes gives him the greatest wisdom–that while life is absurd, to take pleasure in the good things God provides. And he closes the last volume, realizes he has his life back (after often reading four hours a day in addition to his day job) and enjoys a lovely dinner with his wife.

The book convinced me to settle for more modest projects. I wasn’t always sure I liked Jacobs very much, even though his romp through the encyclopedia was fun. But he is who he is with us and I guess that counts for something. So, if you’ve ever had aspirations to read through an encyclopedia (harder because only World Book still prints them), you might want to read this first. It could save you a lot of time.

Review: Falling Into a Good Life

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Cover image of "Falling Into a Good Life" by Laurel Richardson

Falling Into a Good Life

Falling Into a Good Life (Literary Scholar), Laurel Richardson. Paper Stars Press (ISBN: 9781737862451) 2026.

Summary: Laurel Richardson miraculously recovered from a serious fall leading to a reinventing of her life in a new place.

One night, while ill with COVID, Laurel Richardson attempted to walk down her steps when she suffered COVID paralysis and fell down thirteen steps. She suffered a broken neck, back, arm, ribs, eye socket. She had a severe concussion. Her aide, Fatu called for help the next afternoon when Laurel didn’t answer her phone. The EMTs brought her to Ohio State’s Trauma Center. Her very life was on the line.

Family gathered around her. Even Suzanne, her son Josh’s ex-wife was there, massaging her feet. She would stay with Laurel and do this often. Suzanne asks Laurel to stay with them until her birthday, six weeks off. Laurel promises. She writes, “My sons know I have never ever broken a promise to them.” And she promises.

In this memoir, Laurel describes how she not only survived to celebrate her 87th birthday in 2023 but went through a hard fought but miraculous recovery with the support of family and friends and the skilled and compassionate help of medical and rehab specialists at Ohio State’s Brain and Spine Hospital. And as amazing as this was, considering many don’t survive such injuries or are seriously disabled, she went on to transition into a new and rich life situation, reinventing her life as she did so.

The first several chapters are prefaced with “Here’s what happened. Or didn’t. I don’t know.” It captures the experience of someone heavily medicated who finds herself in a strange place with all these injuries. She hallucinates. Her son Josh challenges her pain management and they reduce her medication to Tylenol. She slowly recovers. takes her first steps. Then she transitions to a re-hab facility, followed by an assisted living facility. As she feels better, she enters into the community. She also thinks about survival, the meaning of her life, and talks with a trusted rabbi about prayer. Friends visit including her writing group. Then the time comes when she can go home.

However, this comes with mixed feelings. Her family sets up the house for her to live on the first floor while grandson Akiva lives upstairs and helps her out. But she misses the people at her assisted living community. She sets up a group with friend to read Jewish texts on Sabbath. She’s doing well. Akiva is in a deepening relationship. But she doesn’t want to live alone in her home.

Through a friend, she learns of The Hartford, an over-55 community. She likes what she sees, and so do her family and friends. But the decision involves downsizing. She describes working with downsizing consultants who help with the process and manage the move–tremendously exhausting but they worked through the house determining what to keep, sell, give to family.

The last part of the memoir describes life in the new community. An emeritus sociology professor, Richardson recognizes all the things the facility does to make this a welcoming community–places for residents to talk any time of the day, groups, celebrations. She describes celebrating New Years Eve for the first time in twelve years. She walks us through her days and the changing seasons. The memoir concludes with a show of Richardson’s quilts in the entrance foyer, an expression of her life and a gift to her new-found community.

She sums up her fall and the new life it led to like this:

“The fall awakened my life source, kindled a resilience I didn’t know I had, and led me to accept both my gifts and my shadow side–I have found the right place for the embodied me to be me.”

Richardson narrates a journey of not only physical rehabilitation but also of spiritual transformation. Her narrative offers vivid descriptions of the healing process, transitioning out of and downsizing from a home, and the dynamics of a community that honors the uniqueness of seniors. Her narrative offers an example of the powerful influence of a loving circle of family and friends. and the gift of sensitive spiritual advisors, both Jewish and Christian in her case.

As a younger senior, I find myself wondering how I will navigate the final part of my life’s journey. The memoir was a tremendous encouragement that growth is possible through all the transitions, even health challenges. A good life needn’t be simply what I had in the past. Richardson describes a life of growing generosity, deepening community, and richer spirituality on the other side of her fall. Her story is one of hope and meaning from which we all may learn.

_____________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author for review.

Review: Serving God Under Siege

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Cover image of "Serving God Under Siege" by Valentyn Syniy

Serving God Under Siege

Serving God Under Siege, Valentyn Syniy. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing (ISBN: 9780802885692) 2025.

Summary: A memoir of fleeing Kherson when Russia invaded, the challenges and lessons of displacement, and returning home.

Valentyn Syniy’s world turned upside down on February 24, 2022, as it did for many Ukrainians. He is the president of the Tavriski Christian Institute (TCI), located in Kherson, in southeastern Ukraine, not too distant from Russian held Crimea. They were about to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of training Christian workers to serve the church in Ukraine. They’d built an attractive campus with an extensive library. And then came the rumors of war. Working with a security consultant, they’d planned for a possible evacuation. And then a call came from a friend at their bank the day before, urging them to withdraw their funds and clean out their safe deposit box.

Syniy then goes on to narrate the next nine months, living as homeless, displaced persons in Ivano-Frankivsk. Churches there took them in. But first, they had to evacuate, as the sound of shelling grew louder. The drivers they contracted to evacuate them refused to go. This meant buying a used van, which repeatedly broke down enroute. There were good-byes with people they feared never seeing again. Then long queues on the roads, hoping they had enough fuel to reach their destination.

Those who welcomed them did so generously–yet soon there were strains–mostly reflecting the different cultures, including the church cultures of their respective regions. Yet they learned not only to accommodate differences but begin to see themselves within the national fabric of the Christian community in Ukraine.

Assistance from other Christians in Europe and the United States rapidly began to pour in. Quickly, they realized a need to pivot from theological education to humanitarian aid. Much of this consisted of turning the vans around and taking food to the Kherson region, helping those who stayed.

Siniy is honest about his disappointment with Russian theological partners who equivocated or were silent about the Russian invasion. He recounts a long conversation of being urged to “reconcile” without any expression of repentance or denunciation of Russian aggression and war crimes. He also discusses a sobering conference of theologians on “Theology after Bucha” and what it means to preach the gospel in the light of the horrible atrocities in that and many other towns.

But there are also lighter moments–Easter celebrations and his daughter’s wedding. He describes the cross-pollination among believers that would not have occurred apart from the war. And he recounts the continuation of their mission to train Christian leaders in their new location, using both in-person and online courses to continue to train Christian leaders.

In November 2022, the news came that Kherson had been re-captured by Ukrainian forces. (It has remained under Ukrainian control since then, although facing nearly daily shelling from nearby Russian forces.) Siniy describes returning to Kherson, seeing his father and mother who stayed, and witnessing the destruction of the TCI facilities. Russians used them to house military and then stripped the campus of anything of value. Subsequent shelling badly damaged a number of buildings.

This is a powerful and moving memoir. Siniy captures the anxiety of evacuation, the struggles of displacement, and Christians at their best and worst in a crisis. It also captures the resilient faith that presses on in the mission to train Christians for leadership in the church. Their website states: “TCI is the first and only evangelical Christian school in Ukraine with full state accreditation to award bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theology and ministry. Its accredited programs are recognized by Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and provide a legal and professional foundation for graduates to serve in both church and public contexts.” While hoping to re-build in Kherson, they have established a regional training center in Kyiv.

At this writing, Russia and Ukraine remain at war. Russian forces shelled Kherson in the last day (May 27). This book is a good reminder to me of our need to continue to pray for the peace of Ukraine, and for our fellow believers in that country.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: She Teaches Me Still

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Cover image of "She Teaches Me Still" by Andrew T. Le Peau

She Teaches Me Still

She Teaches Me Still, Andrew T. Le Peau. Fill Us Publishing (ISBN: 9798993671819) 2026.

Summary: A memoir, by her husband of 47 years, of Phyllis Strong Le Peau, a nurse, campus minister, writer, and church leader.

Reading this memoir made me wish I’d known Phyllis Strong Le Peau better during her life. Although we were colleagues in the same collegiate ministry, we worked in different areas on different teams and only occasionally crossed paths. But two things I can say about her that come up over and over in this biography was that she lit up any room she entered. And while joyous and fun, she was a person of great depth evident in her probing Bible studies and care for people.

In some ways, her generous and welcoming spirit belies her roots. She grew up in a separatist fundamentalist church in a suburb of East St. Louis. But her life was rooted in an intact family with parents who loved her, and while steeped in the Bible. she was able to recognize the central focus on God’s redemptive grace. Thus, she extended that grace in welcome to all she met.

Le Peau traces her educational journey after high school through nursing school, her work as an ER and pediatric nurse, and her work with Nurses Christian Fellowship (NCF). She always engaged with ministry with peers and patients. Working in an interdenominational ministry, she began to question the separatism of her youth. That work also brought her into contact with her future husband. NCF was a division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. As it turned out, Andy worked with InterVarsity on the same team as she. He traces their courtship from a 1974 “not-a-date” lunch to a September 1975 wedding.

Marrying Andy meant another big change for Phyllis. During their engagement, Andy accepted an editorial position and InterVarsity Press in the Chicago area. Phyllis returned to nursing. Following chapters chronicle the growth of their family (she was several years older than Andy and so they did not wait long), successive moves to three houses on the same street, and Phyllis’s first study guide–one on Habakkuk I used with a number of groups!

An invitation to spend a summer vacation in Michigan with friends led to the next adventure of their lives. They quickly fell in love with their cottage on the lake in Fremont. This included Phyllis’s struggle to water ski! Then they learned that the owners were selling. They wondered about buying it. Phyllis’s “Andy let’s do it” settled matters. It meant a lot of work, but created a place of welcome for family, friends and other renters.

Opening themselves to hospitality was just something Phyllis did. Andy was an opposite in many ways but he joined her in turning homes and cottages into welcoming places. This part of the book included stories of the ways she was “crazy fun.” All of this was a manifestation of an infectious love for people–family, students, coworkers, people in their church. In her later years, Phyllis returned to InterVarsity as a staff director and then as an evangelism influencer, working with many younger colleagues.

Retirement led to a new season of influence, working with a national ethnic reconciliation effort in her denomination, until a slow growing lung cancer suddenly exploded in 2021. One of the most moving moments in the book was her passing, when Andy told her “it’s okay for you to go be with Jesus.” The final chapter, “Remembering” looks back over their years and all the ways “she teaches me still.”

Andy Le Peau is a gifted writer, but I can’t imagine writing the memoir of one’s wife. Yet I think he succeeds in a way that offers an honest tribute to a remarkable woman. He doesn’t pass over foibles but handles them lightly. The person he portrays is one in the grip of God’s grace, extending his care to all she met. I mentioned at the beginning that I wish I’d known Phyllis better in life. Thanks to this memoir, I think I do now and she also teaches me.