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Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life, won the 2015 Minnesota Book Award for General Non-Fiction.
"So you're the little woman who started this big war," Abraham Lincoln is said to have quipped when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin converted readers by the thousands to the anti-slavery movement and served notice that the days of slavery were numbered. Overnight Stowe became a celebrity, but to defenders of slavery she was the devil in petticoats.
Most writing about Stowe treats her as a literary figure and social reformer while downplaying her Christian faith. But Nancy Koester's biography highlights Stowe’s faith as central to her life -- both her public fight against slavery and her own personal struggle through deep grief to find a gracious God. Having meticulously researched Stowe’s own writings, both published and un-published, Koester traces Stowe's faith pilgrimage from evangelical Calvinism through spiritualism to Anglican spirituality in a flowing, compelling narrative.
Watch a 2014 interview with the author of this book here:
- Sales Rank: #998729 in Books
- Published on: 2014-01-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .90" w x 6.00" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 384 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* The subject of this accessible and absorbing interpretive biography was perhaps the most famous American woman of the nineteenth century and by far the most famous member of a family of distinguished—indeed, notorious—clergymen and Christian educators. Naturally enough, then, the lens through which Koester illuminates her subject is that of the Christian life. Harriet Beecher (who married another clergyman, Calvin Stowe) remained seriously committed to living out the Christianity all the Beechers embraced. That meant dedication to her spouse and children and also advancing the progressive Christian causes—women’s education and suffrage, abolition, black civil rights. Chafing to do her part after 18 years of motherhood, Stowe recruited female relatives to help her so she had the time to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the biggest American best-seller of the nineteenth century. It made her a celebrity overnight. She followed it with further novels, short stories, travel accounts (enabled by her fame), home-management advice books, and plenty of advocacy journalism. Meanwhile, she struggled mentally with the stringent Calvinism of her father—a development relieved somewhat by her understanding that living out Christianity, including utter trust in Jesus, was more important than theology. Koester engagingly and intelligently discusses each major novel, each family crisis, each journey, and each spiritual change, including a fluctuating interest in spiritualism after the deaths of two of her sons, without a whiff of academic fustiness. A top-notch read. --Ray Olson
Review
-- James M. McPherson
Pulitzer Prize winner for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
"The daughter, sister, and wife of prominent clergymen and theologians, Harriet Beecher Stowe outshone them all in her impact on American religion and reform. Her life and work were framed by a spiritual quest that led from her ancestral Calvinism to high-church Episcopalianism and even spiritualism. Nancy Koester’s lucid narrative and penetrating analysis carry the reader along unfailingly on this fascinating quest."
-- Debby Applegate
Pulitzer Prize winner for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
"It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was in her lifetime the most famous and influential woman in the United States, bar none. But she has been largely forgotten today. Nancy Koester’s comprehensive biography brings Stowe’s personal story to life for a new generation while re-creating the fierce religious and cultural battles that inspired her to write the Great American Novel that helped turn the course of American history."
-- Booklist (starred review)
"An accessible and absorbing interpretive biography. . . . Koester engagingly and intelligently discusses each major novel, each family crisis, each journey, and each spiritual change, including a fluctuating interest in spiritualism after the deaths of two of [Stowe’s] sons, without a whiff of academic fustiness. A top-notch read."
- - Christianity Today Feb 25, 2014, Harold Bush
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Spiritual Adventurer
Koester's biography should assume its rightful place as the best overall account of Stowe's spiritual interests and thought. Though written in part for serious scholars, ordinary readers should find it engaging as well. And that's a good thing: because, as many critics now agree, Stowe deserves recognition as one of the most influential spiritual writers in our nation's history.
- - Gospel Coalition Review, Nov. 20, 2013 Matthew J. Hall
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life
…Stowe emerges from Koester’s account as a profoundly human character. Though known as an author, Stowe is presented first and foremost as a woman of her time—as a wife and mother. In fact, one of the strengths of Koester’s biography is the way she explores the attention Stowe felt regarding her duties as a mother—and what she perceived to be a God-given calling to write. Even more, Stowe understood this calling to be for a specific purpose. It was her duty, she believed, to write in such a way that would effect a change in the moral conscience of Americans, most of whom she concluded were entirely apathetic to the moral scandal of slavery in America.
About the Author
Nancy Koester has taught religion and church history atLuther Seminary, St. Paul, and at Augsburg College,Minneapolis. An ordained Lutheran minister and a spiritualdirector, she has also written Journeying through Lentwith Luke and Fortress Introduction to theHistory of Christianity in the United States.
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Woman, Fascinating Times
By Carl Albing
Get to know this amazing and influential woman and get a feel for such a turbulent time in US history, all in just 326 pages! (the rest are end notes, etc.) Well worth reading, we get to know Harriet Beecher Stowe, both the public side, from events in her life and from the several books she wrote, and the private side, from her thoughts expressed in letters and diaries. Koester's biography takes seriously Ms. Stowe's world view and explains her point of view, her theology, how it influenced her life and how it meshed or didn't with the then prevailing views -- all in very reader-friendly terms.
Koester weaves Stowe's personal events and writings into the larger tapestry of US and world historical events. Stowe's writing and public campaigning against slavery made her both famous (and infamous) and influential in the mid and late 1800s. But she was more, so much more, than just an anti-slavery activist.
Some surprising elements included trips to Europe, when and how Harriet spoke (or didn't), whom she met, whom she befriended on these trips; that she wrote for and what she wrote for the first edition of the Atlantic Monthly; what she thought of President Lincoln; what she thought of women's suffrage and its leaders; what other books she wrote; and her Florida connections.
The life story, as told by Koester, moves along, propelled by events. But the author adds helpful insights and summaries throughout. The review on the back cover talks of "Nancy Koester's lucid narrative and penetrating analysis" -- that describes it perfectly.
If I had any complaint it would only be that, after getting to know Ms. Stowe so well I would have liked a lengthy or extensive quote from her diary or letters, just to hear her talk at length, as we seemed, in the end, to know her so well, to have lived with her through so much. There are many shorter quotes and summaries of such writings throughout the book, however. Moreover, the book has extensive end notes (a true scholarly work, though very readable) and a brief five page index - neither of which distracted me while reading this compelling life story.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Enriching on many levels
By Nancy Olson
What an enjoyable book--from so many perspectives! It is an intriguing tale of a gifted person trying to live by her faith and convictions in the midst of cultural and political whirlwinds. Stowe was an intelligent and talented woman living in a man's world, a religious questioner in a context where voicing questions and doubts was vocationally dangerous for her family, a persuasive writer who needed deep wisdom to discern where to apply her penetrating words. We are treated to her development over the years into a powerful social critic where she saw the opportunities and limits of public involvement.
Koester writes with a lively style and fondness of metaphor. Of Stowe's attempt to escape her grief after son Henry's death Koester writes, "grief was a stowaway; it rode along in Harriet's heart." Or her brother George, "who needed perfectionism like a drowning man needs a sack of bricks."
As a lover of American history I appreciated the connections Koester makes to the various historical events and Stowe's personal experiences which contributed to, and are found in, Uncle Tom's Cabin. At times it seemed like a thriller with foreshadowing of how events would be played out later.
I learned much from this book and from the life of Stowe, perhaps nothing greater than how we can (and need to) change and grow over the years, and that through deep reflection and personal challenges our faith and understanding of life get richer and deeper. I used to appreciate Stowe for her contribution to American history. Now I appreciate her as a wise mentor as well.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Intriguing and Insightful Reading
By Judy Bangsund
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I have been curious about Harriet Beecher Stowe since reading Uncle Tom's Cabin last year; Nancy Koester's book offers many insights into her life and the times in which she wrote. She gives a thorough and well-researched biography of Stowe along with summaries of Stowe's many books and articles. Koester's writing is delightful; to quote her own assessment of Stowe, Koester knows how to turn a phrase.
What sets this biography apart is indicated in the subtitle: A Spiritual Life. Stowe was a woman of deep Christian faith, but it was far from a simplistic faith. The complexity and motivational force of Stowe's faith is woven into all she did and wrote. I found this inspiring and intriguing -- what Stowe lacked in stature (she was a small woman) she more than made up for in courage based on faith.
Koester's book is spiritual without being sentimental; scholarly without being stuffy; both inspiring and intriguing. I highly recommend this book.
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