Julia Scheeres
Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980's and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all-encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother - more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children - and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining: surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe - a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic - is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor.
I read that description on the back cover and purchased this book on the opening day of a friend's local bookstore, Niche Books, in beautiful downtown Lakeville, Minnesota. Having grown up in rural Indiana, I felt a connection. Having a deep faith in Jesus and a respect for church things, I was interested to hear about the author's experiences. What I didn't bargain for was how engrossing her story is, which reads like a novel. Did I say engrossing? Maybe I should have said heartbreaking. It's hard to believe this is a true story about her actual experience at an infuriatingly abusive-in-the-name-of-religion "school" in the DR in the 80s. So sad that what feels like a work of fiction that, stereotypically, presents all the "religious" people as cruel, egocentric monsters, is an accurate account of the author's childhood and adolescence.
First Line: It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50.
Page 56 / Line 5: She looks like that whorish new singer, Madonna.
A Good Line from Somewhere in the Middle: Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.
Last Line: David, I love you.
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