****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
In The Winding Way Home, the reader is introduced to a family that seems ordinary, even idyllic, at first glance. We meet a loving couple, educated and financially comfortable, raising two sons, Matt and Josh. Not too many pages into the story, the reader discovers that this family is anything but ordinary. The dad has a brain that makes Sherlock’s “mind palace” look like a single-wide. I found it fascinating to read the intricate descriptions of the inner workings of Jesse’s mind, revealing how fine the line can be between genius and insanity. Not surprisingly, one of the sons is also neurodivergent. The dynamics between the neurotypical and neurodivergent brothers captures a tension that many families deal with every day, framing it in the positive light of valuing and celebrating differences.When tragedy strikes the family, each responds and copes in their own way. Rather than fall into the cliche of turning on one another, we see them pull together, but this does not obscure the fact that each is fighting their own private battle with grief.Most interesting to me was Jesse, the dad, whose planet-sized brain nearly fractures under the strain of reconciling himself to his loss and to the horror of the unknown aspects of the tragedy. Through most of the novel, we witness Jesse’s interior life as he tries to keep it together. His straddling of sanity and insanity is embodied in his “power animal” Chester the chicken who keeps him honest, showing up in a persistent, awkward hallucination that keeps Jesse from fooling himself that he is OK.Thematically speaking, the best way I can think of to recommend The Winding Way Home is to lay it alongside a similar, fairly well-known book and emphasize the profound differences between the two. (Spoiler warning!) Back in 2007, Canadian author William Paul Young caused quite a ripple in the evangelical Christian world with the publication of his book The Shack. In 2017, the novel was made into a movie, which brought the story’s themes to a wider audience. The Shack is essentially the story of the kidnapping, assault, and murder of a little girl and the girl’s father’s attempt to resolve the unresolvable question, “Why did God allow this to happen?” In both the novel and the movie, God is portrayed as a personal (human-like) being, intimately involved in human affairs. In a mystical encounter, God reveals to the little girl’s father the facts that are supposed to comfort him: Missy was never alone, she’s in a better place now, and all this happened for a reason. If that explanation fails to satisfy you, leaving many questions about God’s “goodness” hanging uncomfortably in the air, The Winding Way Home is the book for you.In Wildman’s novel, where a similar tragedy befalls a young girl, he boldly calls out the shortcomings of a view of God as a personal being who has the power to prevent such suffering yet fails to do so. Rather than talk circles around this age-old problem, he proposes a completely different model for imagining God. The “deity” Wildman offers us is Being, or Reality, itself as a complex fabric composed of patterns of infinite beauty. Woven into that fabric are horrors and delights, enigmas and wonders, strand laying aside strand. All there is for the human to do is to stand in awe of what “is,” and to choose to love existence itself in a posture very much like faith. One could argue that this non-anthropomorphic way of envisioning God leaves humans alone in the universe – but does it, really? Or are we just used to the idea of a God that is comfortably modeled after our image?This book is not an easy read, but it trusts the reader to do the hard work of wrestling with its difficult subject matter rather than offering comforting platitudes and cliches to smooth over the inexplicable suffering we so often encounter in this life.
