Title: As the Sycamore Grows
Author: Jennie Miller Helderman
Publisher: Summers Bridgewater Press
Publication Date: October 11, 2010
Paperback: 360 pages
ISBN: 978-0982773208
Genre: Non-Fiction

Book Synopsis:

As the Sycamore Grows is a true story about abuse, loss, redemption and hope.

Think about Sleeping with the Enemy out in the woods when the enemy totes a Bible and packs a .38. Mike slapped and shoved, but his primary tools were isolation and economic abuse. Until he discovered the power of the Lord as another means of control. Ginger was brought up to pray and obey, but she escaped the isolation and poverty of the cabin hidden behind a padlocked gate.

Both Ginger and Mike speak, as do family, friends, in-laws and exes. Thus Ginger is revealed as a flawed heroine, a rebellious teenager who abandoned her baby. Mike ran away to escape his father’s fists and yet, years later, he glimpsed himself in his father’s casket.

From south Texas to a Foxfire lifestyle in Tennessee, they spiraled downward into poverty by Mike’s choice, and abuse enforced by religion and a gun.

Undergirding the abuse is loss: the alienation of families, the spiritual void from betrayal of church, and the death of the son Ginger abandoned. This boy’s suicide as a teenager, symbolized by the sycamore tree, became the wedge that allowed Ginger to break free and ultimately to work toward ending the legacy of abuse.

My Review:

Brilliant, emotional, evocative, and hopeful As the Sycamore Grows by Jennie Miller Helderman is a raw and honest look at domestic violence and how it can go from generation to generation. Helderman was sent out to get a brief story and found herself writing non-fiction narrative, which took five years to complete, of the lives of Ginger McNeil and Mike McNeil, chronicling their abusive marriages, childhoods and how their marriage affected their children. Helderman dispels the myth that abused women who seek refuge in a shelter are poor and poorly educated. In a well-balanced non-fiction narrative Helderman speaks on numerous occasions with Mike McNeil, family members, clergy, friends, seeks out court documents, and where her story began, with Ginger McNeil. While Where the Sycamore Grows is at times a deeply sad story, it is an important one to read for just as there are numerous types of abuse there are numerous causes and long term effects.

Helderman handles the delicate subject matter with care and consideration for both parties; neither casting pity nor rebuff, rather stating the facts of each side, because as Helderman states, the abuse began long before Mike and Ginger married. Helderman delves into their childhoods to help shed some light upon their emotional states prior to their marriage. As the reader hears from Ginger, now a member of the shelter that once took her and her sons in when she needed help the most, she is forever grateful to the people who made her safety possible, yet she does not cast herself in a martyr’s light, making her story as well as Mike’s all the more intriguing. As the Sycamore Grows is a book that draws the reader in and does not let go. My first thought upon completing this book was to do more to donate what items I could to shelters, then to give this book to every person I know. At the end of the book Helderman offers up two hotline numbers and an email address for those who need assistance or a shelter, and throughout the book Helderman and Ginger offer advise and statistics neither were aware of at the beginning of either of their journeys.

I cannot praise this book enough and could go on and on writing, but that would indeed give away the whole book, which is much better told by those who lived it. As a side note, I recently found out one of my Aunts and her children, who are all younger than mine, were living isolated and in a shack, quite similar to Ginger’s, fortunately her siblings stepped in and took my Aunt and cousins to safety. As the Sycamore Grows is a book I would recommend everyone read, because even in our own families, those smiling Christmas cards can hide pain and hardship family members may not know about, I know, my Aunt sent one every year and until that last year when they did not have address.

About the Author:

Jennie Helderman broke the glass ceiling at age ten by becoming the first girl page in the Alabama State Legislature. That surge of girl power wouldn’t be the last time she saw a need to put women’s issues at the forefront. Years later, after she helped set up a crisis-call center in an old house, a cry for help at the other end of the phone line resounded in her head. That call was the catalyst; eventually, the empty bedrooms upstairs served as the community’s first shelter for victims of domestic abuse.

From there, Helderman began work with women’s issues and leadership, community development, public relations and communications, beginning in Gadsden, Alabama, and reaching to national levels. She has championed women’s and children’s issues and worked with child abuse victims. From 2000 until her term expired in 2006, she presided over the six-member board of the Alabama Department of Human Resources, which serves 520,000 clients each month and oversees all family abuse issues in the state. A 2007 Pushcart Prize nominee, Helderman coauthored two nonfiction books, Christmas Trivia and Hanukkah Trivia and writes profiles for magazines. Previously she chaired the editorial board of the 120,000 circulation alumnae magazine of Kappa Kappa Gamma, The Key. Her latest book is As the Sycamore Grows. Helderman is married to a retired newspaper publisher; is the mother of two and grandmother of three; and has recently moved from Alabama to Atlanta. Her website address is www.jenniehelderman.com.

Jennie Helderman’s AS THE SYCAMORE GROWS VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR ‘10 officially began on October 4 and will end on October 29, ‘10. You can visit Jennie’s blog stops here during the month of October to find out more about this great book and talented author!

I received a complimentary copy of As the Sycamore Grows by Jennie Miller Helderman from Pump Up Your Book Promotion as part of the tour. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.