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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Driving toward inner peace in a "bubble of white noise", October 31, 2003
By A Customer
I live three miles from the Pentagon, less than an hour's walk on a sunny fall afternoon. Sixties liberal that I am though, I saw it only as a destination for peace marches. But when I woke up the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, with smoke still seeping through my open windows from the terrorist attack the day before, my perceptions had undergone a sea change. "The military is there to protect us," it dawned on me, "and someone's just blown a hole in that protection." With my former convictions in disarray, it's no wonder I was drawn to this memoir in which the author suffered a similar shock to her pacifist beliefs. "Does being a pacifist mean...it's wrong even to defend yourself?" she asks. "On TV, I saw that huge plane magically pushing its way into and through a New York skyscraper, metamorphosing along the way into a blooming poppy of fire. I watched tiny, fragile human figures standing at those broken windows a hundred floors up, someone's daughter, someone's son, all peering down and hoping against hope, not knowing there was no hope. Every time I see them, recall them, I want to seize something, anything, on the other side of the world and smash the hell out of it. I know I won't be satisfied until I see whole towns on the other side of the world destroyed. I horrify myself. I want to run away from myself." Henderson does "run away." Once she has hugged her Marine chaplain husband goodby, as he ships out for Afghanistan days after September 11, she sets off to drive across the country in a '78 Corvette with only her German shepherd to keep her company. But though she leaves the scenes of carnage behind, she can't escape from her churning emotions, her fear for her husband, or the contradictions that beset her mind. The conflict between her normal pacifism and her instinctual desire for vengeance is not the only discord in Henderson's life: She's a Quaker pacifist married to a Lutheran pastor and Marine chaplain. She parts ways with her husband as well on the subject of religious beliefs -- her growing rejection of the belief that Jesus was God incarnate. Most poignantly, her desire to have a baby increases with every tick of her biological clock, while her husband -- afraid he would follow in his father's footsteps and be an inadequate parent -- doesn't want children at all. While Driving by Moonlight is a "road" book, it is much more than that. The story of Henderson's trip is vivid, funny and at times harrowing (as she nearly becomes trapped in a sudden blizzard). The family, friends and strangers she encounters along her way are memorable characters, well portrayed in her hands. But her story is not just that of her journey from one coast to another, but of her journey through life. Fortunately for the reader, the author not only weaves her trip and her life complications together adroitly, but she seems utterly lacking in pretensions and leavens her serious themes with delicious humor. I couldn't stop laughing when she told how she and her dubious husband decided to renovate their only bathroom -- without the help of a plumber. (A perfect start to Sunday during the time the bathroom was ripped out was to pick up the paper from the doorstep, drive to the nearest museum and settle down in the still empty rest room.) Though I read mostly fiction, I found this memoir as engrossing as any novel. While I originally picked up the book because the author mirrored the reactions I'd had after September 11, I found myself becoming more engrossed in Henderson's life, in particular her struggle (sadly unsuccessful) to become pregnant, which meant fighting to convince her reluctant husband to agree to each round of infertility treatment, and finally to in vitro fertilization, or as Henderson describes it, "a final Hail Mary roll of the dice." Henderson ends with as many contradictions as she started. Planning the trip "gave me the illusion that I controlled my life," she writes, an illusion of which she was quickly disabused as weather closes the road in front of her. But the act of driving itself, immersed in the white noise of the Corvette's engine has become a form of "centering prayer" and she is learning to live -- as all of us must -- with uncertainty. Meanwhile she drives on. Darkness falls and her headlights show nothing but the side of the road. But tomorrow, "the moon will slowly begin opening like an eye, widening to reflect the Light and illuminate the darkness before slowly closing again. Way opens, way closes, and then way opens again, circling around and around as I drive on, the moon and the starry patchwork of constellations all turning and tinkling in the solar wind." I felt enlightened and enriched for having read this beautifully written and honest account of another woman's struggle to come to terms with the contradictions in her life.
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