No Turning Back: My Summer With Daddy King (Hardcover)

by Gurdon Brewster (Author) "I ENTERED THE ROOM, full of excitement, and sat down near the front..." (more)
Key Phrases: creative minority, Daddy King, Reverend King, Auburn Avenue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In the summer of 1961, Brewster, a white seminary student from the North, worked at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where both Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. were pastors. In this moving memoir, he recalls his first encounters with Atlanta's segregated restrooms, restaurants and public swimming pools, and describes finding the spontaneous church services of the black Baptist tradition both unnerving and energizing. When local white ministers didn't embrace Brewster's idea of setting up meetings between black and white church youth groups, Brewster's eyes were opened about the intransigent racism of ostensibly moderate white clergy. (Less dramatically, Brewster also learned about that staple of Southern cuisine, grits, during his Atlanta summer.) Brewster's book is valuable not only for the record of his own awakenings, but for the personal anecdotes about King Sr., who emerges as a passionate, wise man with a sense of humor equal to his sense of justice. Though Brewster is not attempting to analyze the Civil Rights movement, he does offer useful insights about the importance of hymnody in black churches' freedom struggle. The prose is uneven; often, Brewster's descriptions are vivid and energetic, but occasionally he lapses into didactic clichés (I was shaken. This experience would change my life.). On the whole, however, this memoir is engaging and inspiring. (Oct.)
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Review
"What Brewster learned in his summer with the King family, surrounded by an entrenched, segregated society, is insoiring reading."

Product Details

• Hardcover: 233 pages
• Publisher: Orbis Books; illustrated edition edition (October 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570757283
• ISBN-13: 978-1570757280
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #889,008 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting, Charming, Unusual, November 19, 2007

By	S. Cerquone - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'll admit to my bias: Rev. Brewster is the pastor of the Episcopal church I currently attend. He's a lovely, humble man, who for many years didn't talk much about his experiences with Daddy and Dr. King. We, his parishioners, only knew tidbits of his summer in Atlanta in '61. Needless to say, after reading this book, it is with both surprise and awe when I say how his story is both profoundly moving and important to read. We know so much about MLK Jr. but here is where you read about Daddy King's life, and his own struggle with civil rights as a sharecropper's son. You also learn of the wonderful people who surround the Kings at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

5.0 out of 5 stars No Turning Back: My Summer with Daddy King, March 17, 2008

By	Ronald C. Wootengreen (Las Vegas, NM) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While I agree with the reviewer who wishes for more of the author's emotional experience in his account, this is an engaging read, a page-turner. On the other hand at times he is refreshingly frank, honest, and revealing of just how innocent and naive he was as a bright-eyed and bushey-tailed seminarian.

There are moments when one wonders how Brewster ever lived to tell this tale. It is a total wonder that this young white outsider wasn't killed by bigoted Red Necks in the Atlanta area. It could have happened at the roadside gas & grocery, or at the community pool, or at a church parking lot one evening. In all three instances it was but for the grace of God that Gurdon Brewster made it through the Summer of 1961.

The world is a better place because people such as Reverend Brewster are in it!

3.0 out of 5 stars Spotty Disappointment, December 7, 2007

By	Lawrence R. Holben (Mt. Shata, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Given the subject matter, one hopes for more in the way of insight and emotion than this well-meaning book ultimately delivers. It has its moments, to be sure, moments that move one to tears. And Daddy King does come across as a powerful spiritual figure. But the author's limitations as a writer seriously compromise the ultimate effectiveness of the book, which seems to have enough real content for a good long article. In the end one admires Daddy King and Mrs. King, one has a certain affectionate respect for the author, but one (at least this one) leaves unsatisfied. The author was not well-served by his apparently over-indulgent editor(s).