“Well-written, absorbing, and a great pleasure to read . . . will appeal to Christians struggling to square their traditional beliefs with acceptance of homosexuality as well as to all those interested in adoption, lesbian marriage, and the changing shape of America’s families.”
—Elizabeth C. Fine, Virginia Tech University
Waiting for the Call takes readers from the foothills of the Appalachians—where Jacqueline Taylor was brought up in a strict evangelical household—to contemporary Chicago, where she and her lesbian partner are raising a family. In a voice by turns comic and loving, Taylor recounts the amazing journey that took her in profoundly different directions from those she or her parents could have ever envisioned.
Taylor’s father was a Southern Baptist preacher, and she struggled to deal with his strictures as well as her mother’s manic-depressive episodes. After leaving for college, Taylor finds herself questioning her faith and identity, questions that continue to mount when—after two divorces, a doctoral degree, and her first kiss with a woman—she discovers her own lesbianism and begins a most untraditional family that grows to include two adopted children from Peru.
Even as she celebrates and cherishes this new family, Taylor insists on the possibility of maintaining a loving connection to her religious roots. While she and her partner search for the best way to explain adoption to their children and answer the inevitable question, “Which one is your mom?” they also seek out a church that will unite their love of family and their faith. Told in the great storytelling tradition of the American South, full of deep feeling and wry humor, Waiting for the Call engagingly demonstrates how one woman bridged the gulf between faith and sexual identity without abandoning her principles.
Born almost totally deaf, Philip Zazove has spent his entire life beating the odds first by excelling in public schools during an era when most deaf children went to special schools, then by aspiring to become a medical doctor. When the Phone Rings, My Bed Shakes is the remarkable story of his determination and achievement in realizing his dreams.
Despite his stellar record at Northwestern University, Zazove was rejected by a host of medical schools. This only caused him to press harder, which won him acceptance at Rutgers University. He transferred to Washington University in St. Louis where, again against all advice, he decided to specialize in family practice. In vignettes of his patients, some amusing, others moving, he reveals the dedication and humanity that have made him a respected and well-loved doctor. His story will inspire all who read it.
Few people today remember John Swainson. As a teenage soldier he lost both legs in a WWII landmine explosion. Back in the United States, following a meteoric political rise in the Michigan State Senate, Swainson was elected as Michigan's youngest governor since Stevens T. Mason.
In 1970 Swainson was elected to the Michigan Supreme Court, becoming one of the few public officials to have served in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of state government. Then, in 1957, he was indicted on federal charges of bribery and perjury, and convicted of lying to a federal grand jury. Forced to leave the state Supreme Court and disbarred from practicing law, he became a pariah, sinking into depression and alcoholism. He virtually disappeared from public view.
Lawrence M. Glazer re-examines the FBI's investigation of Swainson and delves into his 1975 trial in detail. He reveals new information from eye-witnesses who never testified and, in a poignant coda, relates the little-known story of Swainson's rehabilitation and return to public life as a historian.
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