Shirley Brosius

You’ll be pulled right along, holding your breath to find out what happens next. Susan Elaine Jenkins’ compelling memoir reads like a well-plotted novel, but unfortunately, it’s all too true. You’ll be dismayed at the injustices of life, yet delighted to discover a gracious woman, willing to bear her soul. Instead of breaking the tempo with chapters, Jenkins simply sets off anecdotes by inserting what I’ll call whispers from God that point to truths she learned at that time, such as: “Do you like China, My child? You don’t know yet about their suffering, their pain. But I do. I know them, and I love them.”

Jenkins alternates writing about her life in the United States and her life in China. She experienced the scandals of her life in America, but she experienced the scandalous love of God and His healing during her time in China, where she teaches performing arts at international schools. Her ability to show instead of tell transports you to another culture, where she once found eight bank tellers snoozing on counters and learned that no matter how she ordered her eggs, they arrived sunnyside up. She takes harrowing bike rides and meets people that allow her to interpret and understand the Chinese people. Her friend Ouyang taught her of class distinctions and related protocols.

As the book winds down Jenkins shares something she has come to understand: “. . . the brokenness and malfunction that was left in the wake of sin was in itself becoming a way of finding God.” That’s a lesson that will stay with the reader. I hope Jenkins will continue to write and publish in her fresh style because she will surely touch the lives of many by offering hope to the hurting.