On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, & Holiness

Elizabeth Andrew writes as an act of connecting to her surroundings both geographically and spiritually. Capturing the land of her childhood backyard--the Hudson river valley and her spiritual home and new house in Minneapolis, Minnesota, she leads the reader on the quest to feel at home with one's self and one's beliefs. With this common and pressing goal, Andrew frames her reflections in the lath-and-plaster language of a house, the cluttered pantry, the loose-screened porch, the dim bedroom, traversing the interior realms of doubt, memory, imagination, and a prayer-a-private world, all irrevocably tied to her broader community. Beyond the bungalow, she swims in a northern Minnesota lake, worships in a church at the base of the Witch's Hat water tower, listens to whistling trains, and finds love.