A Book of Kells:: Growing Up in an Ego Void
by Margaret Kell Virany
Category: Family & Relationships

As a five-year-old girl, the author is baffled by parents who are such dedicatedexamples of the gospels they never reveal who they really are. Bear skins and tennisracquets hint at a different past. Helped by seventy-two flimsy letters that had logged200,000 miles, she succeeds, at age sixty-nine, in finding her parents? lost egos.Meanwhile, the reader is swept from an Ontario farm to an English hearth in World WarI, paddles the fur trade route and keeps tabs on a missionary among the Swampy Cree. Alegendary love affair leads to a five-day winter trek by two people alone in the universeto find a place for a baby to be born. But there is an aftermath to joy during the Great Depression and World War II insmall communities. In spite of biblical and behavioral paradoxes, plus a black sheepcomplex and near suicide, the author finds herself also. Much thanks is due to the family?s Methodistpattern, a guru-like professor (Northrop Frye) and a college motto (The truth shall makeyou free.) Whatever your age and whether inner or outer adventures interest you more,this book is stimulating to read. It dances a delicate balancing act between ego and soul.