Publish Date Summer 2021
This past year during months of isolation as Denis and I sheltered at home, I sat at my desk laying down sentence after sentence. There was nowhere to go and few distractions as I wrote toward the end of a manuscript I was working on. That sounds more idyllic than it actually was. Trust me to I find new ways to avoid work. I read way too much news. I went to bed with my phone – way bad! I baked far too much and needed to find ways to channel all those calories by leaving them on the doorsteps of others. I watched television series featuring drunken, divorced detectives who suffered from depression and supers who hated them as they hunted bloody killers, until all I wanted were sentimental, smarmy happy endings where everyone loved everybody else, the flowers bloomed, and the rabbits did not eat my tulips.
After many revisions, all the errors (we could find) corrected, and every detail tended to, No Place is on its way to the printer with a release date sometime in the next two months. I try not to worry about who might be offended by my story? What did I leave out? Is the writing good, or at least decent? What if it doesn’t measure up to the kind endorsements it received? Too late! (See the kind endorsement below from Byron Borger.)
As the book makes its way into the world I hope what remains clear about the story will cause people to think about their own story. How has God been faithful through the years? Has it caused growth in wisdom? What has caused a deeper love for him and others?
An Endorsement for No Place
There are memoirs that are so interesting and well-written that one just enjoys spending time within the story they tell. There are others where the author has learned much, perhaps the hard way, and we are wise to listen in, absorbing her hard-won truths. And there are those that are sheer testimony, giving glory to God who seems the real actor in the story’s drama. It is rare when a memoir is all three. In No Place, we learn about her young adult years, her marriage to Denis, and their struggles with fundamentalism and each other. Much of this is set in the often wild days of the Jesus Movement. When they join a commune and reach out to hippies and druggies it becomes a vivid experience that changes them for the rest of their lives. Margie Haack’s No Place is thankfully one of these rare treats that is fun to read, offers profound wisdom, and through which we learn much about the God who is there.
– Byron Borger, owner, Hearts and Minds Books, author of Book Notes
