I Read It in the
Wordless Book

By Betty Smartt Carter
Baker Book House, $13.99

ISBN 080105558X

Growing Up Reformed

Review by Anne Callahan

Twelve-year-old Carrie Grietkirk is trying to understand what life is all about. She lives with her grandmother, who maintains, as a member of the First Dutch Reformed Church, that theirs is a "harmonious and orderly" way to live. The tightly knit community pictured in the novel I Read It in the Wordless Book serves as a microcosm of many U.S. churches in 1976.

The author knows Dutch Reformed ways well, and she knows the temptations of the seventies. The story begins just before Carrie's father returns from missionary service in Thailand. Carrie's mother had died in a car accident and she has grown up under her grandmother's care. Carrie must find her way between such things as admonitions against going to the movies and being duped into seeing a porn film by a masher, between having her grandmother pray for Vietnamese refugees and then refusing to accept the Vietnamese woman Carrie's father has married. Much of Carrie's maturing process involves Ginger Jordan, former Broadway actress and not "acceptable" to the Dutch Reformed congregation.

Author Betty Smartt Carter's writing is full of broad humor and understated meaning as Carrie goes through this critical year of her life. Although the heroine is a youngster, this book is definitely not for young readers. I Read It in the Wordless Book is a tightly wound story with an exciting ending that gives adults much to ponder.

Anne Callahan is a freelance reviewer from Chicago, IL.

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