The Saints of Whistle Grove
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Narrated by:
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Katie Schuermann
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By:
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Katie Schuermann
About this listen
After 150 years of preaching the Gospel, the little country parish of Whistle Grove has closed its doors for good, but the faithful Rev. Edmund G. Oglethorpe remains. There is the empty building and the crumbling cemetery to maintain, and who else will bury old Miriam Werth when the time comes? Told through the voices of generations past and present, "The Saints of Whistle Grove" follows the journey of a son in search of his mother, a daughter in need of connection, a family without a home, and the cemetery that brings them all together.
Join the blessed saints of Whistle Grove in pondering the wondrous mystery that, whoever believes in Christ, “though he die, yet shall he live.”
©2023 Katie Schuermann (P)2023 Katie SchuermannListener received this title free
Enriching Experience
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Gentle teaching in good stories
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The Saints of Whistle Grove is immense: reminiscent of Bo Giertz’s The Hammer of God, with a structure not unlike one of Edward Rutherford’s epic novels.
The saints of the title are not the haloed, pure kind, but ordinary Christians with the same flaws every Christian before and after them has struggled with. We are invited to witness the founding of Whistle Grove and its church by German immigrants starting out on a new chapter of their lives. We live through all the firsts: first marriage, first child, first death. We watch houses being built, and the pride of the villagers as they construct the first church building. We visit each grave, and remember the stories behind them. Through all this we watch the church grow and develop over several centuries, and witness its decline. We see the church doors close: but not quite. It is a history many of us could tell of our own churches, or our own lives.
The chapters are divided into portions, each focussing on one saint like a single colour in a stained glass window. It is only as we draw back that the full picture can be seen: an undying hope that this world is not all there is to life.
The characters are so well-written that we could have met these saints in our daily lives. Some are revealed to us many times during their lives: the stories of others are short and sweet. The book is not set out in chronological order, and uses suspense to hold the attention until little plot resolutions are unveiled at the end of the book.
The author, Katie Schuermann is also the book’s narrator. She skilfully uses different voices for the characters. I particularly enjoyed the way she sang the various hymns included: not in the bright tones of a trained singer, but in the gruff voice of an old man, or the sweet accents of a young girl.
Above all this is a book of comfort. The strength of Lutheran theology can be perceived woven throughout the book, and it will leave you with a sense of contentment rarely found.
An excellent read.
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Listener received this title free
Rather than the chronological account of a historian, Schuermann gives us individual episodes that move back and forth freely between generations. Chapter after chapter, she weaves a patchwork quilt out of these episodes, and gradually names and events begin to be cross-referenced, so that at the end, the lifestory of the Christian community of Whistle Grove emerges in its entirety.
We are drawn into individual joys (courtships, marriages, births of children) and sorrows (illnesses, disabilities, heartbreaks, griefs); but also the highs and lows of the community as a whole (epitomised by the raising and, ultimately closing, of the church and the congregation that worships in it). National and international events, though always off-stage, intrude themselves into the life of these saints. In particular, the author gives a moving account of the enforced abandonment of German and the switch to English, as an unintended consequence of America's involvement in the First World War. Schuermann has the knack of portraying her characters in these fairly brief sketches with such vividness that the readers is left to want to know more about their lives at the close of each chapter – again and again.
The whole is framed by the funeral of one of the last members of the congregation after the latter has already been disbanded, which opens the book; and the lasting impact of the Christian Gospel that occasion has on a person who thitherto had been cut off from both the place and the faith, in the closing chapter.
As such, while the book stands up for any reader as a coherent web of good stories well told, it is underpinned by a confidence in the Christian faith, and the importance of Christian faithfulness in each generation, that is always timely – and especially so at time when many real-life Whistle Groves have been absorbed or emptied by a changed world, and many real-life Bethlehem congregations struggle for survival (or have lost in the struggle).
The book is narrated vividly and with great clarity by the author – who also gets to display a fine singing voice. The impatient listener will have no trouble catching every word at up to 1.5x speed at least.
A Charming Lifestory of a Christian Community
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