Author: Marilyn Färdig Whiteley
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889205590
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Annie Leake Tuttle was born in Nova Scotia in 1839 and died there in 1934, yet her search for education and self-support took her far afield. During her life she filled important positions from Newfoundland to British Columbia, as an educator of teachers and as the matron of a Methodist rescue home for Chinese immigrant women who had worked as prostitutes. Her autobiography paints a vivid picture of the joys and hardships of growing up on a pioneer farm and documents her spiritual and educational quests and conquests. In addition, readers see the independence and strength of character that enable Annie Tuttle to take on family obligations that fall to an unmarried daughter and sister, and to meet the challenges of step-motherhood, the adjustments of aging and ultimately the prospect of death. Marilyn Färdig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle’s autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that “One above” was always “working for the best,” helping her in the work she was intended to do. In The Life of Annie Leake Tuttle: Working for the Best, we find a rich collection of the writings of an articulate woman who shows herself to be both ordinary and extraordinary. It is a fascinating chronicle of the spiritual and secular life of an independent and spirited woman in early Canada.
The Life and Letters of Annie Leake Tuttle
Author: Marilyn Färdig Whiteley
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889205590
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Annie Leake Tuttle was born in Nova Scotia in 1839 and died there in 1934, yet her search for education and self-support took her far afield. During her life she filled important positions from Newfoundland to British Columbia, as an educator of teachers and as the matron of a Methodist rescue home for Chinese immigrant women who had worked as prostitutes. Her autobiography paints a vivid picture of the joys and hardships of growing up on a pioneer farm and documents her spiritual and educational quests and conquests. In addition, readers see the independence and strength of character that enable Annie Tuttle to take on family obligations that fall to an unmarried daughter and sister, and to meet the challenges of step-motherhood, the adjustments of aging and ultimately the prospect of death. Marilyn Färdig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle’s autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that “One above” was always “working for the best,” helping her in the work she was intended to do. In The Life of Annie Leake Tuttle: Working for the Best, we find a rich collection of the writings of an articulate woman who shows herself to be both ordinary and extraordinary. It is a fascinating chronicle of the spiritual and secular life of an independent and spirited woman in early Canada.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 0889205590
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Annie Leake Tuttle was born in Nova Scotia in 1839 and died there in 1934, yet her search for education and self-support took her far afield. During her life she filled important positions from Newfoundland to British Columbia, as an educator of teachers and as the matron of a Methodist rescue home for Chinese immigrant women who had worked as prostitutes. Her autobiography paints a vivid picture of the joys and hardships of growing up on a pioneer farm and documents her spiritual and educational quests and conquests. In addition, readers see the independence and strength of character that enable Annie Tuttle to take on family obligations that fall to an unmarried daughter and sister, and to meet the challenges of step-motherhood, the adjustments of aging and ultimately the prospect of death. Marilyn Färdig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle’s autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that “One above” was always “working for the best,” helping her in the work she was intended to do. In The Life of Annie Leake Tuttle: Working for the Best, we find a rich collection of the writings of an articulate woman who shows herself to be both ordinary and extraordinary. It is a fascinating chronicle of the spiritual and secular life of an independent and spirited woman in early Canada.
The Life and Letters of Annie Leake Tuttle
Author: Annie Leake Tuttle
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 088920330X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
"Marilyn Fardig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle's autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that "One above" was always "working for the best," helping her in the work she was intended to do."--BOOK JACKET.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 088920330X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
"Marilyn Fardig Whiteley gently frames Tuttle's autobiography by placing it into social and historical context. She delineates the way in which Annie claimed her identity as she began to record her life story and demonstrates how her evangelical faith enabled her to show, in her narrative, that "One above" was always "working for the best," helping her in the work she was intended to do."--BOOK JACKET.
Tracing the Autobiographical
Author: Marlene Kadar
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587166
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
The essays in Tracing the Autobiographical work with the literatures of several nations to reveal the intersections of broad agendas (for example, national ones) with the personal, the private, and the individual. Attending to ethics, exile, tyranny, and hope, the contributors listen for echoes and murmurs as well as authoritative declarations. They also watch for the appearance of auto/biography in unexpected places, tracing patterns from materials that have been left behind. Many of the essays return to the question of text or traces of text, demonstrating that the language of autobiography, as well as the textualized identities of individual persons, can be traced in multiple media and sometimes unlikely documents, each of which requires close textual examination. These “unlikely documents” include a deportation list, an art exhibit, reality TV, Web sites and chat rooms, architectural spaces, and government memos, as well as the more familiar literary genres—a play, the long poem, or the short story. Interdisciplinary in scope and contemporary in outlook, Tracing the Autobiographical is a welcome addition to autobiography scholarship, focusing on non-traditional genres and on the importance of location and place in life writing. Read the chapter “Gender, Nation, and Self-Narration: Three Generations of Dayan Women in Palestine/Israel” by Bina Freiwald on the Concordia University Library Spectrum Research Repository website.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587166
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
The essays in Tracing the Autobiographical work with the literatures of several nations to reveal the intersections of broad agendas (for example, national ones) with the personal, the private, and the individual. Attending to ethics, exile, tyranny, and hope, the contributors listen for echoes and murmurs as well as authoritative declarations. They also watch for the appearance of auto/biography in unexpected places, tracing patterns from materials that have been left behind. Many of the essays return to the question of text or traces of text, demonstrating that the language of autobiography, as well as the textualized identities of individual persons, can be traced in multiple media and sometimes unlikely documents, each of which requires close textual examination. These “unlikely documents” include a deportation list, an art exhibit, reality TV, Web sites and chat rooms, architectural spaces, and government memos, as well as the more familiar literary genres—a play, the long poem, or the short story. Interdisciplinary in scope and contemporary in outlook, Tracing the Autobiographical is a welcome addition to autobiography scholarship, focusing on non-traditional genres and on the importance of location and place in life writing. Read the chapter “Gender, Nation, and Self-Narration: Three Generations of Dayan Women in Palestine/Israel” by Bina Freiwald on the Concordia University Library Spectrum Research Repository website.
Boom!
Author: Julie Rak
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554589401
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of memoirs by celebrities and unknown people have been published, sold, and read by millions of American readers. The memoir boom, as the explosion of memoirs on the market has come to be called, has been welcomed, vilified, and dismissed in the popular press. But is there really a boom in memoir production in the United States? If so, what is causing it? Are memoirs all written by narcissistic hacks for an unthinking public, or do they indicate a growing need to understand world events through personal experiences? This study seeks to answer these questions by examining memoir as an industrial product like other products, something that publishers and booksellers help to create. These popular texts become part of mass culture, where they are connected to public events. The genre of memoir, and even genre itself, ceases to be an empty classification category and becomes part of social action and consumer culture at the same time. From James Frey’s controversial A Million Little Pieces to memoirs about bartending, Iran, the liberation of Dachau, computer hacking, and the impact of 9/11, this book argues that the memoir boom is more than a publishing trend. It is becoming the way American readers try to understand major events in terms of individual experiences. The memoir boom is one of the ways that citizenship as a category of belonging between private and public spheres is now articulated.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554589401
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
Since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of memoirs by celebrities and unknown people have been published, sold, and read by millions of American readers. The memoir boom, as the explosion of memoirs on the market has come to be called, has been welcomed, vilified, and dismissed in the popular press. But is there really a boom in memoir production in the United States? If so, what is causing it? Are memoirs all written by narcissistic hacks for an unthinking public, or do they indicate a growing need to understand world events through personal experiences? This study seeks to answer these questions by examining memoir as an industrial product like other products, something that publishers and booksellers help to create. These popular texts become part of mass culture, where they are connected to public events. The genre of memoir, and even genre itself, ceases to be an empty classification category and becomes part of social action and consumer culture at the same time. From James Frey’s controversial A Million Little Pieces to memoirs about bartending, Iran, the liberation of Dachau, computer hacking, and the impact of 9/11, this book argues that the memoir boom is more than a publishing trend. It is becoming the way American readers try to understand major events in terms of individual experiences. The memoir boom is one of the ways that citizenship as a category of belonging between private and public spheres is now articulated.
The Memory of Water
Author: Allen Smutylo
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554588766
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Over the last forty years, Canadian adventurer, writer, and artist Allen Smutylo has experienced some of the wildest and most captivating waters imaginable in all corners of the globe. The stories in The Memory of Water—all of them accompanied by the author’s own stunning artwork—describe his adventures in the Arctic, South Pacific, Great Lakes region, and India. In the Arctic he is attacked by a polar bear, stalked by a rogue walrus, and nearly drowns in ferocious waters. But his Arctic stories also celebrate human creativity as they recount the life of the pre-Inuit people, who, hunting in a changing environment, endured many hardships and developed new technologies, such as the sea kayak, to cope. Other stories include an account of a sojourn in a small Georgian Bay fishing village as a young artist, an adventure on an urban river in southwestern Ontario, and a portrayal of the complex underwater world of the South Pacific. Travelling the River Ganges in India, the author finds that a massive misuse of water is complicated by a billion people’s faith-based adoration of the same water. The Memory of Water probes a crucial and contemporary issue—that of our relationship to water and the wildlife and human life that depends upon it. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world, in artistic depictions of it, or in a good story well told.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554588766
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Over the last forty years, Canadian adventurer, writer, and artist Allen Smutylo has experienced some of the wildest and most captivating waters imaginable in all corners of the globe. The stories in The Memory of Water—all of them accompanied by the author’s own stunning artwork—describe his adventures in the Arctic, South Pacific, Great Lakes region, and India. In the Arctic he is attacked by a polar bear, stalked by a rogue walrus, and nearly drowns in ferocious waters. But his Arctic stories also celebrate human creativity as they recount the life of the pre-Inuit people, who, hunting in a changing environment, endured many hardships and developed new technologies, such as the sea kayak, to cope. Other stories include an account of a sojourn in a small Georgian Bay fishing village as a young artist, an adventure on an urban river in southwestern Ontario, and a portrayal of the complex underwater world of the South Pacific. Travelling the River Ganges in India, the author finds that a massive misuse of water is complicated by a billion people’s faith-based adoration of the same water. The Memory of Water probes a crucial and contemporary issue—that of our relationship to water and the wildlife and human life that depends upon it. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world, in artistic depictions of it, or in a good story well told.
Dead Woman Pickney
Author: Yvonne Shorter Brown
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1771125489
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
Dead Woman Pickney chronicles Yvonne Shorter Brown’s life growing up in Jamaica between 1943 and 1965 and teaching in Canada from 1969. Told with stridency and humour, the stories include both personal experience and history. Taking up the haunting memories of childhood, along with persistent racial marginalization of Black people, both globally and in Canada, the author sets out to construct a narrative that at once explains her own origins in the former slave society of Jamaica and traces the outsider status of Africa and its peoples. The author’s quest to understand the absence of her mother and her mother’s people from her life is at the heart of the narrative. The author struggles through life to discover the identity of her mother in the face of silence from her father’s brutal family. In this updated edition she adds a coda, “finding mother”, constructed from archives, genealogy, letters, and journals. Initially published in 2010, this second edition includes expanded text and a foreword by Sonja Boon, author of What the Oceans Remember.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1771125489
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 383
Book Description
Dead Woman Pickney chronicles Yvonne Shorter Brown’s life growing up in Jamaica between 1943 and 1965 and teaching in Canada from 1969. Told with stridency and humour, the stories include both personal experience and history. Taking up the haunting memories of childhood, along with persistent racial marginalization of Black people, both globally and in Canada, the author sets out to construct a narrative that at once explains her own origins in the former slave society of Jamaica and traces the outsider status of Africa and its peoples. The author’s quest to understand the absence of her mother and her mother’s people from her life is at the heart of the narrative. The author struggles through life to discover the identity of her mother in the face of silence from her father’s brutal family. In this updated edition she adds a coda, “finding mother”, constructed from archives, genealogy, letters, and journals. Initially published in 2010, this second edition includes expanded text and a foreword by Sonja Boon, author of What the Oceans Remember.
Unheard Of
Author: John Beckwith
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554583985
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 406
Book Description
Canadian composer John Beckwith recounts his early days in Victoria, his studies in Toronto with Alberto Guerrero, his first compositions, and his later studies in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger, of whom he offers a comprehensive personal view. In the memoir’s central chapters Beckwith describes his activities as a writer, university teacher, scholar, and administrator. Then, turning to his creative output, he considers his compositions for instrumental music, his four operas, choral music, and music for voice. A final chapter touches on his personal and family life and his travel adventures. For over sixty years John Beckwith has participated in national musical initiatives in music education, promotion, and publishing. He has worked closely with performing groups such as the Orford Quartet and the Canadian Brass and conductors such as Elmer Iseler and Georg Tintner. A former reviewer for the Toronto Star and a CBC script writer and programmer in the 1950s and ’60s, he later produced many articles and books on musical topics. Acting under Robert Gill and Dora Mavor Moore in student days and married for twenty years to actor/director Pamela Terry, he witnessed first-hand the growth of Toronto theatre. He has collaborated with the writers Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, and bpNichol, and teamed repeatedly with James Reaney, a close friend. His life story is a slice of Canadian cultural history.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554583985
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 406
Book Description
Canadian composer John Beckwith recounts his early days in Victoria, his studies in Toronto with Alberto Guerrero, his first compositions, and his later studies in Paris with the renowned Nadia Boulanger, of whom he offers a comprehensive personal view. In the memoir’s central chapters Beckwith describes his activities as a writer, university teacher, scholar, and administrator. Then, turning to his creative output, he considers his compositions for instrumental music, his four operas, choral music, and music for voice. A final chapter touches on his personal and family life and his travel adventures. For over sixty years John Beckwith has participated in national musical initiatives in music education, promotion, and publishing. He has worked closely with performing groups such as the Orford Quartet and the Canadian Brass and conductors such as Elmer Iseler and Georg Tintner. A former reviewer for the Toronto Star and a CBC script writer and programmer in the 1950s and ’60s, he later produced many articles and books on musical topics. Acting under Robert Gill and Dora Mavor Moore in student days and married for twenty years to actor/director Pamela Terry, he witnessed first-hand the growth of Toronto theatre. He has collaborated with the writers Jay Macpherson, Margaret Atwood, Dennis Lee, and bpNichol, and teamed repeatedly with James Reaney, a close friend. His life story is a slice of Canadian cultural history.
The Water Lily Pond
Author: Han Z. Li
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
This evocative narrative draws us into the inner life of a young Chinese peasant girl, May-ping, and her first glimmerings of youthful love and idealism under the Maoist regime in China. As she grows into a mature woman, she becomes increasingly aware of the strife around her. An intelligent girl born into a Poor-Class family in a small village in rural China, she is, because of the Maoist policy towards such families, able to pursue her dream of going to university. To her surprise, urban snobbery and “student thought-spying” at university make it essential for her to hide her real thoughts. Such self-protection becomes especially necessary once her idealistic boyfriend Dan — a secret boyfriend because young people were forbidden to be romantically involved — is sent to a labour camp for his outspoken ways. In her village, she learns that everything has value except the lives of girls and women. One of her childhood friends, a landowner’s daughter who because of her family’s Landlord Class, is not allowed to go to university drowns herself when forced to face an arranged marriage. Hua-Hua, a shy and gentle neighbour, hangs herself after her husband beats her brutally for not bearing him a son. May-ping manages to survive the Cultural Revolution as a member of the Communist party who feels outside the system and keeps her inner self intact. Her story reveals how political change during the Maoist regime left its mark on ordinary people. Employing stories within stories, the narrator carries the reader to a mythological realm to images of the resilient water lilies and the nurturing lily pond.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587328
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
This evocative narrative draws us into the inner life of a young Chinese peasant girl, May-ping, and her first glimmerings of youthful love and idealism under the Maoist regime in China. As she grows into a mature woman, she becomes increasingly aware of the strife around her. An intelligent girl born into a Poor-Class family in a small village in rural China, she is, because of the Maoist policy towards such families, able to pursue her dream of going to university. To her surprise, urban snobbery and “student thought-spying” at university make it essential for her to hide her real thoughts. Such self-protection becomes especially necessary once her idealistic boyfriend Dan — a secret boyfriend because young people were forbidden to be romantically involved — is sent to a labour camp for his outspoken ways. In her village, she learns that everything has value except the lives of girls and women. One of her childhood friends, a landowner’s daughter who because of her family’s Landlord Class, is not allowed to go to university drowns herself when forced to face an arranged marriage. Hua-Hua, a shy and gentle neighbour, hangs herself after her husband beats her brutally for not bearing him a son. May-ping manages to survive the Cultural Revolution as a member of the Communist party who feels outside the system and keeps her inner self intact. Her story reveals how political change during the Maoist regime left its mark on ordinary people. Employing stories within stories, the narrator carries the reader to a mythological realm to images of the resilient water lilies and the nurturing lily pond.
The Curtain
Author: Henry G. Schogt
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
Henry Schogt met his wife, Corrie, in 1954 in Amsterdam. Each knew the other had grown up in the Netherlands during World War II, but for years they barely spoke of their experiences. This was true for many people — the memories were just too painful. Years later, Henry and Corrie began to piece their memories together, to untangle reality from dreams. Their intent was to help others understand what had happened then, and how it influenced and affected not only their lives but those of all who survived. The seven stories in The Curtain reveal how two families — one Jewish, one non-Jewish — fared in the Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II. Each vignette highlights a specific aspect of life; all show how life changed for everyone, and forever. Four stories are based on the author’s memories of his own non-Jewish family: Henry’s friendship with a Jewish teenager; the conflict of personal antipathy with the realization that help must be provided; the Schogt parents’ determination to do the right thing; the difficulties of coping with an aunt with Nazi sympathies. These are stories about the randomness of survival and the elusive nature of memory. For the Jewish family, three stories drawn from the memories of the author’s wife and family demonstrate the bewildering situation of trying to make impossible life-determining decisions when faced with confusing and deceitful decrees. The family must struggle with the luck — or absence thereof — of finding refuge when forced from their homes, and with the perplexing inconsistencies of the collaboration of Dutch authorities and police with the Nazis. The Curtain emphasizes the difference between the options that were open to non-Jews and Jews in the Netherlands. Non-Jews could freely choose whether to actively resist the Germans, collaborate with the Nazis, or just to do nothing, and try to live a normal life in spite of wartime restrictions. Dutch Jews, on the other hand, did not have a choice — whatever they did, whatever decisions they made, they were doomed, and it often seemed, when someone survived, just simple luck. A short introduction about the war years and an appendix with a chronology of decrees, events, and statistics, provide background information for this haunting memoir of those disturbing years during the German Occupation in the Netherlands.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554587816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
Henry Schogt met his wife, Corrie, in 1954 in Amsterdam. Each knew the other had grown up in the Netherlands during World War II, but for years they barely spoke of their experiences. This was true for many people — the memories were just too painful. Years later, Henry and Corrie began to piece their memories together, to untangle reality from dreams. Their intent was to help others understand what had happened then, and how it influenced and affected not only their lives but those of all who survived. The seven stories in The Curtain reveal how two families — one Jewish, one non-Jewish — fared in the Netherlands during the German occupation in World War II. Each vignette highlights a specific aspect of life; all show how life changed for everyone, and forever. Four stories are based on the author’s memories of his own non-Jewish family: Henry’s friendship with a Jewish teenager; the conflict of personal antipathy with the realization that help must be provided; the Schogt parents’ determination to do the right thing; the difficulties of coping with an aunt with Nazi sympathies. These are stories about the randomness of survival and the elusive nature of memory. For the Jewish family, three stories drawn from the memories of the author’s wife and family demonstrate the bewildering situation of trying to make impossible life-determining decisions when faced with confusing and deceitful decrees. The family must struggle with the luck — or absence thereof — of finding refuge when forced from their homes, and with the perplexing inconsistencies of the collaboration of Dutch authorities and police with the Nazis. The Curtain emphasizes the difference between the options that were open to non-Jews and Jews in the Netherlands. Non-Jews could freely choose whether to actively resist the Germans, collaborate with the Nazis, or just to do nothing, and try to live a normal life in spite of wartime restrictions. Dutch Jews, on the other hand, did not have a choice — whatever they did, whatever decisions they made, they were doomed, and it often seemed, when someone survived, just simple luck. A short introduction about the war years and an appendix with a chronology of decrees, events, and statistics, provide background information for this haunting memoir of those disturbing years during the German Occupation in the Netherlands.
Through the Hitler Line
Author: Laurence F. Wilmot
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554588227
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Laurence Wilmot’s Second World War memoir is a rare thing: a first-hand account of front-line battle by an army officer who is a resolute non-combatant. And it is paradoxes such as this that also make Wilmot’s book a unique and compelling document. Wilmot, as an Anglican chaplain, is a priest dressed as a warrior, a man of peace in battle fatigues. He is an incongruous figure in a theatre of war, always vigilant for opportunities to partake of silent meditation and prayer, never failing to lose sight of the larger moral issues of the war. His compassion is boundless, his sensitivity acute, and one senses his mounting emotional and spiritual enervation as the death toll of his fellow serving men steadily mounts. At the centre of the book is Wilmot’s witness of the murderous battle at the Arielli. Wilmot’s compassion for the fighting men compels him to leave the safety of his ministry and join them at the front, at great personal risk. There, as an unarmed stretcher-bearer, he is kept busy transporting the wounded under enemy fire. In this crucible of battle we see the qualities that attest to Wilmot’s character and contribute to his memoir’s importance: an indefatigable devotion to his duty to save and comfort the wounded, and a resolve to resist despair in spite of the terrible carnage all around. In short, a singular triumph of the decency of one man in the midst of total war.
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554588227
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 282
Book Description
Laurence Wilmot’s Second World War memoir is a rare thing: a first-hand account of front-line battle by an army officer who is a resolute non-combatant. And it is paradoxes such as this that also make Wilmot’s book a unique and compelling document. Wilmot, as an Anglican chaplain, is a priest dressed as a warrior, a man of peace in battle fatigues. He is an incongruous figure in a theatre of war, always vigilant for opportunities to partake of silent meditation and prayer, never failing to lose sight of the larger moral issues of the war. His compassion is boundless, his sensitivity acute, and one senses his mounting emotional and spiritual enervation as the death toll of his fellow serving men steadily mounts. At the centre of the book is Wilmot’s witness of the murderous battle at the Arielli. Wilmot’s compassion for the fighting men compels him to leave the safety of his ministry and join them at the front, at great personal risk. There, as an unarmed stretcher-bearer, he is kept busy transporting the wounded under enemy fire. In this crucible of battle we see the qualities that attest to Wilmot’s character and contribute to his memoir’s importance: an indefatigable devotion to his duty to save and comfort the wounded, and a resolve to resist despair in spite of the terrible carnage all around. In short, a singular triumph of the decency of one man in the midst of total war.