An Open Letter to Dorcas: Book Review

Dear Dorcas,

This is me blushing.

Nearly two years ago, you sent me your newest book, Coming Home to Roost, as a no-strings-attached gift. Whatever I wanted to do with it, from review it to just enjoy it, was fine with you. Thank you. For a while I was not blogging, and later, anything that was not hissing at me from the front burner did not exist. I am sorry. I believe it is now time to fulfill my commitment (whether spoken to you or to myself, God knoweth; I cannot tell) to justify this gift with the public response I intended.

Because you have produced so many books and won far beyond my experience with writing, it is almost an insult to offer a “review,” as though the quality of your work may be in doubt. So this is not a review in the sense of a star rating or an evaluation of caliber. It is a review in the sense of an overview, a look back at a book that was new in 2023 but is still good for the start of 2025.

Is it your last parenting memoir? I think I remember you saying that. If so, the closure is bittersweet but feels right: you did a lovely job completing your stories of an engrossing life stage.

But here is the thing I really want to say.

When I picked up your book again, the first chapter I read at random was “Untangling the Threads,” about mom-and-daughter relationships and (incredibly!) how to reach gently into the imperfect past through humility, kindness, and good listening. Near the end of the chapter, you wrote, “Most of our influence as moms will be unintentional, and we should work not so much on shaping our children as on becoming the person we want them to be” (p. 51).

Dorcas, I got tears in my eyes.

It was just what I needed to hear,

me in this intensely demanding middle stage

of both holding onto and letting go of my children,

of being swamped

with opposing needs and trajectories:

Especially when for some of them,

I am making up for the lost time of

not having had them when they were little,

and so the bonding and connecting and forming

needs to happen late,

and quickly,

while somehow simultaneously letting go

because hello, they are preteen

and not on my apron strings.

And so I cried a little over your words. They were right for me. They helped me remember to loosen my expectations of myself and my children, and to be present with them and to let us not get it all right.

There’s a lot of good in that book.

I also deeply identified with the evaporating certainty you described in “When Parents Change Their Minds;” also the “Fear and Relationships” chapter on the terror and dread that love can birth in the heart of a parent, because “the more you care for someone, the greater the stakes are” (p. 33). Staying in relationship, you say, is better than staying safe all the time.

Let it be so, Lord. Let us be small in our eyes, held by the Mercy.

Thank you for winnowing out your hard-earned grains of wisdom for us, strong lady—harvested so messily in life, I am sure, and yet arranged so winsomely in your stories. I love how you shape all the ordinary, ill-fitting things to form a full circle and find their places. It is always my favorite part about your work: the deep breath of “So that’s okay, then.”

Thank you. You give me hope for a future with adult children, who will tell me I did not do it perfectly and who will love me—and let me love them—regardless, if we can be brave and kind with one another.

Bless you. Be whole and well, this New Year.

Thank you for your book.

Love,

Shari

Coming Home to Roost, along with Dorcas Smucker’s other books, is available for $12 from Muddy Creek Press. If you have questions or are interested in placing a bulk order for your next book club (a lovely idea you can thank us for later), message the author directly at dorcassmucker@gmail.com.