It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today’s Wild Card author is:
and the book:
The Blackberry Bush
Summerside Press (June 1, 2011)
***Special thanks to Audra Jennings, Senior Media Specialist, The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
David Housholder is a philosophical-spiritual influencer, a sponsored snowboarder and a surfing instructor who dreams of making this world a better place. As the senior pastor at Robinwood Church, an indie warehouse church near the beach in California, he can often be found preaching verse by verse in his bare feet. With his increasing desire to change the world around him, he is the director for several non-profit organizations. Housholder loves to travel and is an international conference speaker. He has spoken to groups in Ethiopia, Malaysia, Canada and London and has also been involved with mission trips. He is especially energized by evangelistic work among Muslims.
Housholder is an avid reader and carries an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He received his undergraduate degree from Pacific Lutheran University and went on to receive his Master of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Then he spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Universität-Bonn in Germany. Housholder fluently speaks three languages, English, Dutch and German, and enjoys reading biblical Greek and Hebrew.
Housholder and his wife, Wendy, have one grown son, Lars. They reside in Huntington Beach, California. Some of his hobbies include photography and tinkering on his 1971 VW bug.
Visit the author’s website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
The Blackberry Bush begins with two babies, Kati and Josh, who are born on opposite sides of the world at the very moment the Berlin Wall falls. You would think that such a potent freedom metaphor would become the soundtrack for their lives, but nothing could be further from the truth. They will follow a parallel path connected by a mistake their great grandparents made years before.
Despite his flawless image, Josh, an artistic and gifted Californian skateboarder and surfer, struggles to find his true role in the world. He fears that his growing aggression will eventually break him if he canât find a way to accept his talent and the competition that comes along with it. Kati, a German with a penchant for classic Swiss watches and attic treasure-hunting, is crushed with the disappointment of never being âenoughâ for anyoneâespecially her mother. She wonders whether she will ever find the acceptance and love she craves and become comfortable in her own skin.
Craving liberation, Kati and Josh seem destined to claim their birthright of freedom together. With the help of their loving grandparents, they will unlock the secrets of their pasts and find freedom and joy in their futures. Today, like Katie and Josh, our youth often fall into two different cultures. Josh is part of the âbroâ culture which is outdoor-oriented, with sports as a focus, and generally more conservative. Whereas Kati is part of the âsceneâ culture which is more liberal and indoor-oriented, focusing on music. These cultures are apparent in the novel and can aid in a better understanding of the issues todayâs 21st century youth are facing as well as the struggles they have in coming to faith.
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Product Details:
List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: Summerside Press (June 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609361164
ISBN-13: 978-1609361167
ISLAND BREEZES
I was really loving on this book before I even started reading it. The feel of the cover, the rough page edges and just a good size to hold comfortably.
this is a story of two people connected by the historic date of their birth – the day the Berlin wall fell.
They are connected in other ways, but it seems as if they might never meet. Finally they are both in California at the same time, and they meet without knowing.
As I read this book, I thought that they might end up as marriage partners.
All along we have Angelo giving us the backstory. This gives us motivation to find our own backstory. It really makes one stop and think.
I’m really looking forward to the next book in this series. There will be more books. Right, Mr. Housholder?
AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:
~ Behind the Story ~
Angelo
Think for a moment. Isnât there a splendid randomness to the way your day is coming together today?
After all, itâs not the big, dramatic things we foresee and expect that make all the difference in our lives. Itâs the chance, random encountersâthe subtle things that surprise usâŚand change the very course of our individual destinies.
The Blackberry Bush is a story about awakening to the fullness of this reality.
And you will never want to go back to sleep.
You can call me Angelo. Iâll be the one telling this story. As you and I travel together across generations and continents in a journey that will take just a few hours, youâll discover not only the gripping stories of Kati, Josh, Walter, Nellie, and Janine but also uncover your own compelling back-story that will change you in ways you can never imagine.
And youâll never be the same againâŚ.
PROLOGUE
1989
Berlin, Germany
Occasionally, out of nowhere, history turns on a dime in a way no one sees coming. ListenâŚdo you hear the sound of jackhammers on dirty concrete?
âWir sind ein Volk(We are one people)!â A large European outdoor crowd chants this over and over into the chilly November night. âWir sind ein Volk!â
Thousands of hands hold candles high in the darkening night of Berlin. Throngs of young people with brightly colored scarves crowd the open spaces between concrete buildings. !ere are partiesâwith exuberant celebrants of all agesâeven along the actual top of the wall. Flowers are stuffed into once-lethal Kalashnikov rises. Hope is contagious.
Itâs November 9, 1989. The first sections of the Berlin Wall are removed, to mass cheers, with heavy machinery. It seems incomprehensible that a small weekly Monday prayer meeting in Pastor Mageriusâs Leipzig, Germany, study grew into the pews of the Nicolai Church and eventually out into the Leipzig city square. !en today, this âPeace Prayer,â figuratively speaking, traveled up the Autobahn to Berlin and converged as an army of liberation on that iconic concrete symbol of Cold War divisionâwith world-news cameras whirring.
Little things can make a big difference. Subtle potency. Gentle power.
âWir sind ein Volk,â the crowd chants as one. The Berlin Wallâa filthy, gravity-based ring of rebar and concrete, tangled with barbed wire and patrolled by German shepherd attack dogsâhas encircled and separated West from East for twenty-eight years. Now it is irreparably pierced.
Unthinkable. No one saw this coming.
Walls are real, you see, yet they always come down. Creation and nature never favor walls. They start to crumble, even before the mortar dries.
*
Elisabeth Hospital
Bonn, Germany
A dayâs Autobahn drive from the festivities in Berlin
That same instant, a severely pregnant womanâs water breaks in the tall-windowed birthing room of the Elisabeth Hospital in Bonn, Germany.
Hours later: âEin Mädchen (a girl)!â Een meisje, translates the exhausted mother with silently moving lips into her native Dutch. Linda, a sojourner in Germany, was born a generation ago in Holland.
Mere blocks away from the birth scene, the mighty Rhine River flows past Bonn on its way downstream to the massive industrial port city of Rotterdam, Lindaâs hometown. Only a few hours away by river barge, Rotterdam, Holland, couldnât be farther from Germanyâon so many levels.
The labor has been long and brutally hard. !e father, Konrad, takes little newborn, black-haired Katarina up the elevator to the nursery. On the way up, an old woman in a wheelchair spontaneously
pronounces Godâs blessing over baby âKatiâ (pronounced âKAH-tee,â in the German way) with the sign of the cross. Kati focuses her glassy little eyes on the womanâs wristwatch.
Konrad is concerned about how pale Katarina is. Was her older sister, Johanna, this porcelain-skinned at birth? Perhaps itâs the thick shock of black hair that sharpens the contrast with her complexion. How will Kati and Johanna get along? he wonders. I guess that will all
start to unfold soon, when they meet each other for the first time.
I wonât be able to protect her, thinks Konrad. Parental anxiety starts creeping up his spine in ways it never did when Johanna, now two, was born.
Perhaps little Kati will need that elevator blessing, he muses uncomfortably.
*
Zarzamora, California
1989
Another Woman With Rotterdam Bloodlines, across the planet in sunny Zarzamora, California, is giving birth at the very same moment (although earlier in the day because of the time difference) to a boy. !e tiny $at-roofed hospital up in the mountains of the Los Padres forest is the port of entry for little baby Joshua.
Janine smiles up at husband, Michael, and takes a first look at Josh, expecting, for whatever reason, to see a pale baby girl. Genuinely surprisedâafter all, this is in the days before ultrasound was universalâto see a vibrant, reddish-hued boy, she suppresses a giggle of delight, a catharsis of joy after so many miscarriages. What fun they will have together! Will he lighten up her melancholy
disposition, perhaps?
Janine sighs in relief as she confirms to herself, Weâre not going to have to take care of him much. Heâs going to be okay. Iâm sure of it. I can tell.
The trumpets of the practicing local high school marching band waft through the open windows as German-born father Michael washes his son off in the sink of the delivery room. The piercing eyes of baby Josh, almost white-blue, glisten in the overhead lights. They stop to focus on Michael for a fleeting minute, then zero in on some yet unseen reality behind his fatherâs shoulder.
ShouldnâtI be saying some ancient German words, a blessing or something, while Iâm doing this? Michael asks himself.
But he canât think of any. He is adrift in the flowing current of this new experience.
The marching band plays on outside. Are they really circling the hospital, or does it just sound like that? the new father thinks⌠.
~ Behind the Story ~
Angelo
I can watch both births as I pick and eat blackberries from the thicket back in rainy Bonn. I smile. Joshua looks so happy to be here. He radiates physical warmth and doesnât seem to need his blanket. He welcomes the new climate.
But Kati doesnât like the cold. Thereâs almost a 30-degree (Fahrenheit) difference in ambient temperature from the womb to the room, and I see her struggle.
And then thereâs the brand-new âbreathingâ thing. How can breathing go from unnecessary to essential in a few seconds? Yet some days we donât even think about breathing, not even once. Amazing. Joshuaâs American birth certificate reads 11-09-1989. Katiâs European one reads 09-11-1989.
How much of their lives are preprogrammed? How much of their minds will be stamped with the thoughts of others? Is life a roll of the dice, or is it a script we just read out to the end? Donât we all
wonder that same thing sometimes?
As Kati and Joshua start to adjust to life outside the womb, the Berlin Wall continues to crumble to shouts of joy.
I write the names Linda and Konrad in Germany, Janine and Michael in California on the inside of the book cover Iâm holding. I always do that, so I donât get confused about whoâs who as I travel
through their stories.
Both fathers, Konrad and Michael, have roots in the Germany that was rebuilding after World War II. Both are self-doubting, somewhat weak Rheinlanders married to practical, sober, very Protestant Dutch women.
Katarina and Joshua are on parallel paths. But only perfectly parallel paths never meet as they stretch into infinity. And since these paths, like ours, arenât perfectâŚwell, you can guess what might happen in this story.
Kati and Josh, born on one of the greatest days of freedom for all human kind, will grow up snared in the blackberry bushâŚlike you.
But if you dare to engage their story at a heart level, a fresh new freedom might just be birthed in you.
So why not listen to that subtle twitter of conception inside your soul? !e one that says, !is year something exciting is going to happen that I canât anticipate. And Iâll never be the sameâŚ.
PART ONE
1999
Oberwinter am Rhein, Germany
Just south of Bonn
Kati
I love looking out our back picture window at the rolling farms. Iâm watching for Opa, my dear grandfather Harald, who said heâd be home by 4 p.m. We live at the top of the road that winds uphill from the ancient Rhine River town of Oberwinter, just upstream from Bonn. Thatâs how everybody here writes it, but they say âOva-venta.â I walk up and down the sidewalk along the switchback road almost every day.
Our home is perched at the top of the hill with the front of the house facing the street that skirts the skyline of the ridge and the back looking away from the river, out at the plateau of peaceful farms, which Opa says the ancient Romans probably worked.
Opa knows a lot of secrets. If he told me what he knows every day for the rest of my life, heâd never run out of things to say. But sometimes he gets sad. He never likes to talk about how things were when he was my age. His voice starts to sound shaky, and that makes me sad too. I stopped asking him about his wartime childhood a long time ago.
My watch says itâs another hour to wait. Really, itâs his watch, big on my wrist. The leather band smells like Opa. Iâm very careful with it since itâs a GlashĂźtte, which is infinitely special.
Sometimes Opa shows me his watch collection from the big mahogany box thatâs a lot like Muttiâs (thatâs what I call my mother) silverware holder. But the GlashĂźtte was always my favorite, and one day he gave it to me. Iâve worn it ever since.
Mutti was angry at Opa for giving it to me. âItâs worth as much as a car!â she said. But Opa simply smiled. He never minds when people are upset with him.
Opaâs study is a magical place. In the corner is the totem polehe brought home from Alaska. !e wooden desk is covered with a sheet hands with peoplein suits and, right in the middle, a recent picture of me. !e books on his shelves are in English and German. He has me read aloud from the chair across the desk from his and tells me that I speak English without an accent, just as they speak it in Seattle, Washington, where he worked for a few years. Weâre on our second time through DaleCarnegieâs How to Win Friends and Influence People. Opa says itâs a very important book, so I believe him.
Opa is the only one who doesnât seem worried about me. He never seems worried about anything. I canât remember seeing him angry. Ever.
I hope he takes me out to his workshop in the shed this evening. Itâs my favorite place. My big sister, Johanna, says itâs not fun for girls, but sheâs wrong. Opa has hand tools and power tools, and all of them are perfectly hung and positioned. !e shed is as clean as Muttiâs kitchen.
Opa tells me that the Bible says all people have âgiftsâ from God and that all the gifts are open to girls as well as boys. He tells me I have the gifts of craftsmanship and interpretation. Those are big words, but they make me feel good.
Weâve made and fixed so many things together there. I have my own safety glasses. He lets me run the band saw all by myself. I can tell by looking at his eyes that he knows Iâll be safe. Mutti doesnât have the same look in her eyes, no matter what Iâm doing.
Mutti cuts my hair really short because sheâs afraid itâs going to get caught in one of the power tools. I hate how it looks. She also tries, continually, to get me to eat more. She doesnât like how skinny I am.
Papa works in Berlin. He got transferred there when the German government moved from Bonn after the Wall fell, when I was little. He comes home on the train most weekends. He works for the foreign
diplomatic service, and he told me this month that he might get transferred again soon, and that we might have to move to America. He and Muttihave been arguing a lot about it while I try to get to sleep at night.
I can tell the arguments are bad, because Mutti slips back into Dutch when she gets angry and also when she talks to me and Johanna. Anger and parenting seem to come out of the same place inside her.
Mutti, unlike Opa, loves to talk about growing up, and how wonderful everything was then. Itâs fun to hear the storiesâand to see her smilewhile she tells them. We take the train to visit her Dutch parents often. It takes only a few hours to reach Rotterdam. I love riding through Cologne, past the blackened dual-spired cathedral. I have another grandfather in Holland who is kind of funny and crabby at the same time. I only have one grandmother, because my German Oma died of cancer before I was born.
I love Rotterdam. My Dutch grandfather (my other Opa) takes me on bike rides through the tunnel, under the big river, and to my favorite placeâthe Hotel New York in the heart of the port. He buys
me a chocolate milk every time, and we watch the big ships come and go. He doesnât like to talk about Germans, even though he reminds me that they built the bike tunnel and highway under the river. Every now and then someone mentions the War. Iâve always known my Dutch grandparents donât like my father. They say itâs not because Papaâs German, but I think it is. He never comes along on our visits to Rotterdam.
Now Iâm looking out the farm-facing window, still waiting for Opa. At the end of our backyard, the blackberry bushes start and wander off into the countryside in lots of directions. I could swear
they get bigger every year. I love to play back thereâespecially with Johanna. I donât ever remember a time when I didnât have a few scrapes on my arms and legs from the thorns. !e farmers in the fields work so hard to raise crops, but blackberry bushes grow all by themselves without any help.
Iâm getting impatient, so I enter Opaâs study to wait there. In his le” second drawer is his drawing kit. Precise instruments to make perfect circles and angles. Papa tells me Opa designed this house with that kit.
Opalets me play with everything in his desk. Using the compass, I draw a perfect circle. !en I draw myself in it. Iâve done this so many times. But Iâm older in the picture than in real life. And my hair isnât short. But I canât stop drawing circles with slightly different sizes. Once I caught myself drawing dozens of overlapping circles around the picture of me. Iâm not smiling in any of these pictures. I think a lot when Iâm drawing the circles.
To me, getting older just means harder jobs. Johanna works harder than I do, and I know Iâll have to be like her soon. She evenmakes dinner sometimes. Math problems get harder. Books lose their pictures and are more challenging to read. I learn so much better with Opa, because thereâs no pressure.
My parents fight about me when they think Iâm asleep. Papa was angry with Mutti because she yelled at me about my school grades. Mutti shot back with, âShe has to get good grades because sheâs not pretty.â My whole body froze in bed when I heard that. Iâm not really sure what grades have to do with being pretty, but itâs very bad somehow. I think Papa would like to be more like Opa, but he canât make it happen.
They donât know how good I am at English. I speak it a lot better than they do. I have to keep from laughing when they try. Thereâs an American couple down in the village with a new baby, living in an
old, crooked apartment. I heard them speaking English and jumped in to their conversation. They asked me where in America I was from.
I fibbed and said, âSeattle.â
I think about America a lot. Maybe I could be a different person there.
Johannaâs pretty; even I can see that. It makes people, all kinds of people, happy to look at her, and they look at her longer than they mean to. I, on the other hand, make people nervous. Except for Opa, people donât like to look right at me.
And everyone always wants me to do better than I am doing. They say itâs because they want the best for me. But it doesnât feel good. The older I get, the further behind I am. I donât have enough
friends. I havenât finished enough homework. My room is not clean enough. I wasnâtpolite enough to my parentsâ guests. And the hardest of all: peopledonât like me enough. Itâs really hard work to get people to like you. Or maybe Iâm especially easy to dislike.
Opaâs study has a big mirror on the door. Standing in front of it, Iâm surprised by how white my skin is. My hair is black, and I have a big nose. Opa says thatâs because most of the families in town have Roman heritage, and that I must have ended up with the local hair and nose. Opa tells me this town has been around for at least a hundred generations. We go for walks in the hills around the village, and he shows me where the Roman roads, walls, and vineyards were. How can anyone know so much?
Even better, Opais the one person who knows me. Last week he brought me a present from Bonn. I opened up the long, little box and removed a black, elegant Pelikanfountain pen. It came with a bottle of ink.
He then pulled out a fresh new ledger. I had to laugh. Opa knows how much I hate math at school. It doesnât feel realâlike somebody got paid to think up a bunch of problems to drive kids like me crazy.
But Opa keeps telling me how important math is for real life, even if I donât think so now.
For the rest of that afternoon, Opataught me double-entry bookkeeping in ink. Real-life stuff I can actually use even now, when Iâm nine years old, to keep track of the little money I earn and spend. He told me that reckoning in German marks was only for practice, because they were going to disappear in a few years, replaced by the euro.
He also taught me that money is magic, and that if you give a lot of it away to improve the world, youâll always have more left over than you started with. Thatâs not what my teacher says about
subtraction, but I know, without a doubt, that Opa is right, as usual. He showed me his accounting books, going back to the 1940s. The numbers got bigger and bigger over the years.
âHow does that work?â I asked
.
He showed me the number in a special column telling how much he gave away last year. I gasped, and my hand came to my mouth.
âThatâs how,â he answered.
I asked him what I would do if I made a bookkeeping mistake with the pen.
âYou wonât,â he said and smiled.
Opa believes in God. My parents are not so sure. !is confusesme all the time. Opa takes me to church on Sundays. We walk down the hill together. He and I are evangelischâProtestant or Evangelical. Itâs hard to translate the term into English. Most of our neighbors in Oberwinter are Catholic. Our stone Protestant church is very small, very old, and musty smelling. !e temperature is always cooler inside than outside. I sometimes fall asleep there on Opaâs shoulder, and he likes that.
The organist is amazing. She plays on national radio. And the organ is very old: 1722 is painted on the pipes. For the rest of my life, Iâm going to make sure I can listen to organ music. My imagination
can go almost anywhere when sheâs playing. After every Sunday service, the organist gives a little concert from the rear balcony where she sits. We stand, lean on the pews behind us, and watch her. We always clap when sheâs done.
Johanna comes with us sometimes, but Opa says itâs important to go to church only when you want to. For whatever reason, Opa and I always want to. Maybe itâs just so we can spend Sundays together, but I know Opa would go even if I didnât exist. It seems to help him be happy all the time and everywhere. I hope heâll teach me this magic when Iâm old enough.
I donât understand much about what goes on in church, but I love it when they read the Bible stories for childrenâs worship, and the littler kids come and plop right down on my lap, as if they belong there. !is Sunday was the story about Joshua and the walls of Jericho. The German Bible says the Israelites were blowing trombones, and Opaâs English Bible says trumpets. Things like that make me think.
I hear the door.
Opaâs home.
