Customer Reviews

A Month of Sundays: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister

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4 star:		(2)
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In A MONTH OF SUNDAYS, author Julie Mars grapples with her beloved older sister Shirley's death - the events leading up to it, the death itself, and the chaotic feelings she's left with afterward. To cope with her grief, she visits a different church each week for 30 weeks in a search for understanding, peace, and meaning. Meaning does come, not with any grand, sweeping insights, but slowly, in bits of memory and experience. And that's what so beautiful about this book - the way Mars weaves together daily stories, past and present, as she seeks to cope with deep emotion. She stops to look at the events that most of us allow to drift by, and thus inspires us to pay closer attention to our own lives. She's a wonderful writer, and her stories are alive with her vivid prose. I gave copies of her book to several friends who are coping with personal loss, and copies to other friends, too, who are not - this book is for everyone with a drive to look deeply into life.

Two Steps Forward, One Back in Grief

In the preface of her newest book, A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: SEARCHING FOR THE SPIRIT AND MY SISTER, Albuquerque, New Mexico author, Julie Mars says: "For seven months, I took care of my sister, Shirley, who was dying of pancreatic cancer....I witness her intense spiritual turbulence and her return to Catholicism....I consider it an honor and a privilege to be with her every day as she considers the state of her soul....As my sister's faith forms its final shape and hardens, mine disappears....When I return home to Albuquerque, I feel a driving need...to go to church."
So Mars does, for 31 Sundays, the equivalent of a month, visiting Christian, Sort-of-Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Unitarian, and nonsectarian places of worship.
Each visit triggers thoughts, feelings and remembrances of Shirley, their siblings and parents; and Shirley's children. Using simple, direct language, Mars interweaves her family's relationships, Shirley's advance toward death, and her own spiritual search for something she can call God, into a microcosm of human experience.
A visit to the Church of the Latter Day Saints evokes this thought: "My father taught me, expected me, to be tough, to follow my own strong will, and not apologize for it. I did. But secretly, I locked myself in the closet and cried so hard I could not breathe. Waves of sadness washed over me, washing me away, and I was enormously bereft, lonely, scared of everything. That was when Shirley would whisper through the door that she wanted to come in. I would crawl into her lap and drink in her silence."
Describing this intimate moment, Mars states a universal truth. Independence can terrify. Everyone needs a safe person and a safe place. Everyone faces the moment when they must lose that security.
The combination of universal and personal experience in this and many other paragraphs in the book makes A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: SEARCHING FOR THE SPIRIT AND MY SISTER a compelling, tender, and moving read.
So do Mars' frank descriptions of caring for a dying person, right to the moment Shirley becomes so weak, she needs diapers, just before her "Final Dive," as Mars calls it, into delirium and coma. Mars' spiritual search and its climax, add a final touch on the last page of the story.
A MONTH OF SUNDAYS is a thoughtful and moving book for anyone, but especially for those facing illness, death, loss, spiritual crisis, and grief. The story is not for the airport or the beach, but for a time to sit down, and think, about life.

A Month of Sundays is a powerful book that reflects the process of grief better than any other book I've read. I deeply felt the author's pain and her need for spiritual truths and answers. Throughout her 31 Sundays, Ms. Mars doesn't find the kind of easy answers we all hope for, but this makes the story more raw and real. I wonder about her now, and I hope she has found some peace and comfort since writing this difficult story.

I would recommend this book to anyone who has experienced loss and feels alone in the quest for meaning.

I am just now buying a copy of this for my sister. I am ½ way through and I have to say I am moved by this book. I heard about it from a radio interview here in NY on WBER 90.5 my college station and I ran home and went to Amazon.com
I am very glad I did
If you have EVER spent time, looking after a loved one who is dieing then this is the book to reads about 5 years after. Do not read it when everything is fresh but do get it and do read it when you feel stronger. It is a nice reminder that you are not alone in your struggles
That others share your hurt, feelings and joy in life.
And for thoughts of us constantly struggling with the "main stream" faith we see used and abused around us this to will help to see it in a new light- again as one who is not a-lone in their feelings if nothing else

I loved this book. Mars takes you along with her on a spiritual journey as she visits a different place of worship every Sunday for 31 weeks. She is also grappling with the recent death of her sister - who she cared for in the last months of her life - and through flashbacks to that time you learn more about why she is so drawn to going on a spiritual quest. Her honesty and beautiful writing made me sad to see the book end. I highly recommend this book.

I certainly am "biased" ( the book is dedicated to me --- what an honor ! ) but this is a "right-on" written book --- written with humor,wit, clarity, honesty and, most of all, with love ! Should have been on the Best Seller List !!!! Wonderfully written !

I gave this book a B mostly because I have a really difficult time with books that are continually sad, even though I can recognize that they are sad but moving and well-written (as was the case with this book). Of course the book is a true story, so the author's continued focus on death is understandable, since she is unable to come to terms with her sister's death. However, it was a bit much for me, especially because I had thought it would be more uplifting than (to me) it was. However, I did enjoy looking at the different belief systems every week and seeing the differences between various religious spaces that the author encountered.

Author Julie Mars drops everything to be with her beloved sister Shirley Ann Carter dying of pancreatic cancer. Ms. Mars observed how her sibling returned to Catholicism, but worried that she waited to long and will burn in hell. When death finally occurred, Ms. Mars grieved deeply, but everyone reminded her that life goes on so she should leave Upstate New York to return to New Mexico to complete her PhD that she put on hold. Still that did not feel right to just go back to her lifestyle. Instead Ms. Mars vowed to visit thirty-one churches over thirty-one consecutive Sundays to learn more about the spiritualism and faith that Shirley discovered towards the end that gave her sister comfort that there is more and discomfit that she thought she failed to achieve the ultimate goal.

Thus the readers gain an intriguing look at a journey for more than the author's search for personal spiritualism and her sister. Instead this is a deep look at the living who need closure when a loved one dies. The various churches run the gamut of congregations to include different races, social and economic classes, etc; some provided warmth to the stranger while others enhanced her doubts re organized religion. Still all remain irrelevant as mourning is personal. Ms. Mar's journey is a memorable memoir of an individual seeking solace and worth reading especially by those going recently or expecting to go down that lonely path soon.

Harriet Klausner

"A Month of Sundays" is about the death of Shirley Kress Carter, born in 1937 and died as Christmas ended in 2000. Shirley was a mother of six, a professional caregiver, a resident of that northernmost patch of Vermont that qualifies almost every resident to call herself a hermit. Women like this often pass through the world unnoticed. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of her sisters, bowed by grief, would attempt to lift her up --- to pump importance into her life --- in a memoir that celebrates the holiness of an unheralded existence.

Sigh. Why me?

Then I started reading.

What Julie Mars has done is present us with a spiritual challenge wrapped in a story. Her sister gets a fatal diagnosis --- pancreatic cancer. Ms. Mars leaves her home in New Mexico and goes to Vermont to care for her. Seven months later, after a final struggle that is wrenching in the extreme, Shirley dies. And then a second struggle begins. From an interview with Julie Mars:

"In the last few months of my sister's life, she returned to the Catholic Church. I found this to be very disturbing because, essentially, as soon as she began her move back toward Catholicism she became terrified of going to hell."

"It was very mysterious to me that Shirley could find obvious comfort in a religion that simultaneously offered (to her) the very real prospect of "eternal damnation." I wondered what could possibly be wonderful enough on the plus side of her religion to balance out such a horrible and grim possibility."

And so Julie embarked on a once-a-week confrontation with religion. For 31 weeks --- each Sunday, whether she was at home or visiting relatives, she went to a church. Afterward, she sat in her car and made notes. During the week, as she thought about her sister, she wrote her memories of her sister.

The book you're expecting is a reaffirmation of faith --- any faith. Early on, though, Julie Mars serves up her first surprise: "Before I got up close and personal with death, I genuinely believed that the spirit went happily on into the afterlife. But when she died, Shirley just seemed dead....I felt, and feel, that her spirit died with her."

There are more surprises. What happens when you're in the room as, day after day, a loved one moves closer to the great unknown. The astonishing power of a charismatic healer. What people say when they're making what they know are farewell phone calls. And what comfort there is --- and just when you think there is no church that speaks to Julie Mars, she finds a few that do --- in going to certain churches.

Along the way, we also come to know Shirley. We get a peek at a bad marriage to a guy who fathered six kids but was no husband. And we come to understand why this smart, attractive, nurturing woman holed up in the woods and put her energy into restoration projects. She did beautiful work and she didn't wear gloves or a mask when she used solvents --- back then, who knew? --- and that is how she got the cancer that killed her. Talk about "ironic."

We also come to know Julie Mars. That she is a gifted writer who presents her grief unvarnished is the least of it. She also is wise enough to show us her troubled relationship with her father and her on-again, off-again marriage --- and not link the two in a forced, simplistic way. And she is brave enough not to serve up a pat ending.

Shirley dies. Julie gets no "closure." Indeed, she barely achieves acceptance.

Which is, I suspect, how it goes --- or will go --- for most of us. We don't "get over" anything. We get through. We make do. We suck it up and carry on, falling and stumbling at frighteningly frequent intervals. And in that long march, maybe something is transformed in us and we experience a kind of grace. Or maybe not.

The thrill of "A Month of Sundays" --- the reason you can't put it down --- is that Julie Mars is our proxy. The path she walks, it's going to be ours. We'd like to do that well, so we pay close attention. For now, this book is a great story, tautly told and deeply felt. Later, when we need it more, we may find ourselves thinking back to it and being grateful for its guidance.

Now I know why I read it without stopping and decided I had to write about it today. It's a "real" book, as raw and urgent and painful --- and joyous --- as life. Want a real book? Here you go.

"But when she died, Shirley just seemed dead. Deader'n a bag of hammers, as they say in the North Country of upstate New York. And I felt, and I feel, that her spirit died with her."

Julie Mars, teacher and author of the previously acclaimed
psychological suspense thriller, THE SECRET KEEPERS, put aside her fictional pen for a moment to write a personal memoir, A MONTH OF SUNDAYS: Searching for the Spirit and My Sister.

Julie's beloved older sister, Shirley, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June of 2000. Nothing seemed to matter any more and Julie packed up, lock, stock and barrel and moved from New Mexico to New York to be with her sister in her months before her death. The Ph.D. program, the book tour, a job ... no, she must be with Shirley. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

Seven months later Julie returned home to Albuquerque, armed with the knowledge that her sister's faith had enabled her to travel though life and into death with unwavering courage and the fact that her own faith was shaky at best. Growing up as young Catholics, Julie despised her religious training while her sister was devout.

"I want to know, one-hundred percent, that what Shirley went through was worth it ... that I will understand death, find God, and live happily ever after." Julie decides to open her heart to the spirit and attend church for a month of Sundays, thirty-one days.

Mainstream to fringe and sometimes downright funky, Julie begins her quest for herself and the meaning of life and death. From Baptist to Buddhist the doors begin to open ... even if the roof might just blow off if she stepped into church. She listens and reflects upon her memories of the time she spent with her sister prior the Final Dive.

I found this to be an incredibly sad, yet very uplifting journey. I loved traveling with Julie into churches I may never visit in this lifetime. Julie may or may not have found the spirit in her quest, but in this book she helps us all ...

For Julie and Shirley:

"The colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky,
Are also on the faces of people passing by.
I see friends shaking hands, saying, "How do you do?"
They're really saying, "I ... I love you!" ~ Bob Thiele, George David Weiss & George Douglas.

Deb Fowler (Roundtable Reviews)