Book Review: Caught in the Winds
By L.D. Wenzel
Meet Morrie. A Catholic attending an Evangelical college at the behest of his Fundamentalist father. He doesn't want to attend this school, though. He wants to go elsewhere and pursue a career in journalism. On his first day, he meets a girl he imagines as his soul mate. They are meant to be together. But when that all falls apart, he is left stumbling through an epic existential crisis, bouncing from relationship to relationship and seeking inner peace through the home-grown philosophy of a mysterious man named Jack, while also befriending a sort of student leader in the movement to implement the fundamentalist resurgence at the college.
Set in the early 2000’s during what, in the religious circles I grew up in, was called “the conservative resurgence”, Caught in the Winds is a rather unsettling book for me. Not because the content is offensive, but I vividly remember going to a more “liberal” Bible college and meeting people very much like the characters in this book. In a lot of ways, I felt like Morrie. I was the Southern Baptist attending the school run by the other Baptists, who, at the beginning of my time there, I had come to see as apostate due to their belief that one could effectively lose their salvation.
Needless to say, the book was a bit challenging for me to read at times.
But overall, I found it to be an enjoyable story. It did take a little bit of getting used to, though. His writing style here felt choppy at first. The way the narrator talked and the way the other characters talked was completely different. The narrator was very conversational, but when others spoke, they took on a more lofty form of english, sometimes bordering on King James English, minus thee and thou. But once I got used to how he was writing, those little quirks that bothered me at the beginning felt more natural.
All in all, this is a fascinating story, especially if you grew up in the Evangelical community. If not, or if you aren’t a religious person at all, I don’t want to tell you not to read the book, but I am not totally sure you will get as much out of it as others might.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.