Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs

Last year I read If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name, by Heather Lende. (Click on the title to read my review of it.) So when I saw that she had another book out, Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friendships, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska I was all in! I really enjoyed learning more about Lende’s life as a writer of obituaries in Haines, Alaska and I was curious to read more about her life there.

It therefore came as a complete surprise to me when I opened the book and discovered that this book was written after she had recovered from a horrific accident that occurred right before she was to have gone on a six-week book tour promoting If You Lived Here, I’d Know Your Name! I was shocked and I also felt like I was catching up on the life of an old friend at this point. It was a bizarre experience, thinking you were picking up another set of small-town tales and discovering that the author had had some tremendously huge trials in her life – first her accident and then the death of her mother.

Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs certainly caught me off guard, but I still found it an enjoyable and relaxing read, despite the turmoil that she and her family went through. Lende is a practicing Episcopalian and definitely has some theological viewpoints that I do not share, but she doesn’t pound you over the head with her belief system so it’s easy for me to, well, ignore. It’s a certain part of her journey through her various life trials, but it is something I can also separate in my head, if that makes any sense at all.

The title of the book comes from a note that her mother wrote before passing away. This book is, in fact, dedicated to Lende’s mother. She includes this prayer in her book though that I rather do agree with and points it out as a comfort to her:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake, Amen.

She then writes:

“Shield the joyous” is poetry. I was so far from joyful, yet I was praying for that and I knew what it meant. I had been filled with joy just before [the accident]. I had been glowing with the joy of my imagined success. My first book was coming out soon and I was fantasizing about doing what glamorous real writers might do. Just thinking about that now makes me flush with embarrassment. There’s that, and I have teenagers so I know what heartache and sometimes-bad choices can spring from great joy. The way “shield the joyous” was tucked in [the prayer] with all that care and suffering (which pretty much summed up what was going on all around me) helped reinforce what I already knew: that you can’t have real joy if you don’t understand what real sorrow is.”

I couldn’t possibly agree more strongly and bookmarked that particular paragraph for several re-reads.

Lende writes well. When she’s talking about eagles soaring over her head or standing underneath an Alaskan nighttime sky, you just want to get to Haines and be for a little while. It sounds so quiet and so peaceful, and yet full of strength and dignity. She describes where she lives as her oasis. To me it sounds like an outdoor cathedral.

So, while I do not agree with Lende in everything, I still find her to be an author I can enthusiastically recommend to others. You can feel her love for her small town and it grows on you. It is beauty. And it pours out of her books.

I am delighted to offer one of you a chance to win a copy of this book. In order to win, simply leave a comment below (U.S. Residents only). We will announce the winner in our May 12 giveaway column.

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Carrie comes by her book obsession honestly, having descended from a long line of bibliophiles. She blogs about books regularly at Reading to Know and Reading My Library.