More Than Conquerors: A Memoir of Lost Arguments
Christianity has saturated every corner of Megan Hustad’s life. From her missionary childhood abroad to her life as an adult in New York dodging questions about her religious past, Hustad explores the legacy of her family’s particular brand of faith in this thoughtful, subtly shaded memoir. Drawing on documents and discussions, she takes a kaleidoscopic view of her family’s life as missionaries, which took them from Minnesota to a small island off Venezuela, then to Holland and back. Hustad challenges the easy dismissal of evangelicals as Neanderthals, providing a well-rounded look at the complex messages that informed her family’s work. At the same time, she spotlights the limitations this religiously focused life imposed on her family, exploring their conflicts, their uneasy compromises, and the roots of their lingering resentment toward one another. Her recollections, interspersed with short vignettes, derive much of their power from Hustad’s unerring ability to pinpoint emotion clearly and concisely. The result is a critique that is not ham-fistedly critical but refreshingly open to different interpretations of what it means to live with faith. --Bridget Thoreson