Customer Reviews

Momma's Enchanted Supper: Stories for the Long Evenings of Advent, A Memoir

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Written from the heart by way of the funnybone, this witty, insightful memoir introduces us to a rich variety of family members through six generations. From the energetic, opinionated Momma of the title, to patient physician Dad, through grandparents and their run-ins with cereal magnates, aunts & uncles and their connection with Cold War heroes and villains, Carol Dechant's relatives combine Midwestern family values with comic antics and heartwrenching loss. Nudging readers in her Foreward to view "the stories you harbor in attics, scrapbooks and memory" as sacred, Carol Dechant leads us, chapter by chapter, on a journey that introduces us not only to her marvelous kinfolk--but acquaints us better with our own. Spiritual without being preachy, this book is lit from within. Read it!

Buy a copy of this book for yourself and copies for friends and families. I've just finished reading the essay entitled "When Wisdom Spoke and We Saw Her Beauty". It's a beautifully written reminder that surface appearances usually belie the treasures underneath, in ourselves, others, and in our relationship with God. Carol Dechant's twining of the everyday with the divine reminds me of the genius of Madeleine L'Engle.

The stories told in this book are all right just as stories, but what do they have to do with Advent? Not much, it seems to me. I have read a lot of Advent meditation books, and most seem better than this. The problem I had with this book was that in the middle of each family story (one for each day in Advent), the author stuck a small Biblical section. This totally destroyed the flow of the family story. It got to the point that I read the Bible story first, and then the family memoir. The family memoirs seemed to have little correlation to the Bible stories they are supposed to illustrate.
The funniest family memoir was the one about when Nikita Khrushchev came to visit their family home. That was a hoot. Otherwise, they seemed kind of quirky and meaningless. If you can get this book out of the library, fine, but I could not really recommend buying this book as an Advent Bible meditation. The unusual title and the reviews caused me to buy it for our Lutheran church library. I would suggest Advent meditation books by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton or Walter Wangerin before I would recommend this one. They seem to offer more meat and deeper more mature, fully-realized, and better thought-out meanings than this one. The stories here don't seem to have a homey-ness that the title implies we will find. I was prepared to like it a lot more than I really did.

Momma's Enchanted Supper is an enchanting collection of
stories with thoughtful reflections tying into the Advent readings. Many of these charming tales evoke my childhood summers spent in Iowa. (Any Midwesterner or
churchgoer will chuckle at DeChant's "Perfection Salad at Iowa's Orange Spectrum Buffet.") Blending humor and wisdom, Momma's Enchanted Supper is sure to appeal to all who see the sacred in our life-stories. Makes a great gift for the holidays.

Wonderful stories full of humor and heart. Reading about Carol DeChant's family reminded me of all the stories I cherish about my own kin. Funny, insightful and poignant reflections on the sacredness of family provide spiritual sustenance during advent, or anytime.