Sticking Points

"Shirley Kurtz gets inside Anna Schlonneger's soul as Anna grapples with her convictions about God's unconditional love, convictions that stand in tension with her received theology and with her fellow church members. Anna's is a peace church with a violent God, and Anna is having none of that. A thoughtful, witty, and ultimately hopeful story. The kind of fiction that rings of truth," says Ted Grimsrud, Professor of Theology and Peace Studies, Eastern Mennonite University; Author, Theology As If Jesus Matters. "Through the obsessive but lovable Gospel Truth writer Anna, Kurtz details a domestic world dazzling in its specificity: the 'pink blush' of the rims of beet-pickled eggs; the 'pinpoint stars' in the 'stygian sky' of a screensaver; and the ever-present threats of prions, pilot lights, and low-acid tomatoes. As Anna struggles to make sense of Abraham and Isaac, of Cain and Abel, her scattered memories coalesce into a gutsy critique of her church's narrative of redemptive violence. For anyone who has ever felt like the 'odd one out'-that is to say, each one of us," observes Kirsten Beachy, Assistant Professor, Eastern Mennonite University Visual & Communication Arts and Language & Literature Department; editor of the anthology Tongue Screws and Testimonies: Poems, Stories, and Essays Inspired by the Martyrs Mirror.