Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present

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Tinsel: A Search for America's Christmas Present

by Hank Stuever (Goodreads Author)

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 290 ratings · 77 reviews

A heartfelt, hilarious look at the evolution of a half-trillion-dollar American holiday

Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas. Stuever starts the narrative as so many start the Christmas season:...more

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published November 12th 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published 2009)

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Jan 30, 2013 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

What do you think would happen if a liberal D.C.-based journalist decided to chronicle Christmas as celebrated by a group of Texans? If you think this sounds like it would result in some hilarious observations, you've got the basic idea of Tinsel.

Hank Stuever gets his liberal views in, subtly and not-so (one angst-filled monologue wonders about the choices of Americans: Why Crocs? ... Why Carrie Underwood? Why George Bush? (Why Hillary Clinton?). (Gotta love the oh-darn-if-I-mention-Bush-I-must-...more What do you think would happen if a liberal D.C.-based journalist decided to chronicle Christmas as celebrated by a group of Texans? If you think this sounds like it would result in some hilarious observations, you've got the basic idea of Tinsel.

Hank Stuever gets his liberal views in, subtly and not-so (one angst-filled monologue wonders about the choices of Americans: Why Crocs? ... Why Carrie Underwood? Why George Bush? (Why Hillary Clinton?). (Gotta love the oh-darn-if-I-mention-Bush-I-must-put-in-a-dem-as-well). I say: Why Barack Obama? (and I'm not softening it with parentheses, either!)

But I digress. Stuever tells us he doesn't believe in the virgin birth, and lets us know he's in good company: Many scholars have concluded ... that the Christmas story is intentionally fictive, written by the earliest, first-century evangelists to beef up Jesus's street cred as a believable Jewish Messiah.

O-kay then. I can tell up-front that the author and I are coming at this from different belief systems. Nonetheless, it's enjoyable in a gossipy sort of way to read his tales of following those wacky over-the-top Texans to their ridiculous mega-churches, to camp out early on Black Friday, and to their business decorating homes for Christmas.

I know this happens a lot for me, but the author's liberal bias really became tiresome. He subtly chastises his subjects over and over for being anti-immigrant, "tax-averse, conservative, ... evangelical." Yet when he listens to a Christian radio station that grants "Christmas wishes" for needy folks, he is angry that no one is asking questions about whether the "needy" truly are so. Why is it good when he asks questions, yet bad when those evil/stupid conservatives do?

You know I had to love a passage where he discusses telling kids that Santa isn't real. He says that he could actually respect kids who thought it through and realized that Santa was fake, because they would grow up to think critically and perhaps - get ready for it - not believe that "other countries harbor weapons of mass destruction when they don't." Yep - apparently even Christmas excess is W's fault.

One thought that kept running through my head as I read this book was that I couldn't believe these people would allow an author to follow them through three Christmas seasons, just so he could write a book basically making fun of them. He even uses most of their real names. I'm still stumped at this.

The book ends with Stuever taking a swipe at Sarah Palin (but oddly enough not mentioning Obama, whose recent election has heralded inherited an economic meltdown of catastrophic proportions) as he flees Texas, of course appropriately via the George W Bush Turnpike, back to his East Coast boyfriend.

I found it ironic that in all the author's searching for Christmas, he missed the big picture. Yeah, sure, he knows "the reason for the season" mentally, but it hasn't become real for him. Still, I sense in him a bit of the Eeyore/melancholy personality that I have as well, and that tended to draw me in (when I wasn't ready to strangle him for his apparently unrecognized liberal bias).(less)

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Jul 30, 2011 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Man, I am sort of on a roll with books I enjoyed! This book was a review on Christmas in this country. Like certain social networking sites, just because I am not a part of the fiesta, doesn't mean I am not interested in why other people are. The author picked an excellent town to review, an up and coming rich-ish suburb of DFW in Texas. He ended up reviewing 3 different types of families over 2006, 7 and 8 and while he didn't focus too much on the downturn that was 2008, it was still an excelle...more

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Dec 19, 2010 Book Concierge rated it 3 of 5 stars

3.5***

Stuever is a reporter and this non-fiction work chronicles his time spent in a suburb of Dallas Texas as the city and its families prepared for Christmas 2006. Porter’s reading of this work is quite good. He gets the cadence and rhythm of speech of his subjects, which brings a certain life to the work.

This is Christmas before the economy took a tumble, before mass foreclosures and lay-offs. When consumerism was still king, and especially so in the wealthier made-for-commerce suburban “co...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Joemmama rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hank Stuever has written an amazing look at the American way of Christmas. In 2006, Stuever, a reporter, went to Frisco Texas, to find one of the nations most over the top celebrations. Before the recession, the upscale neighborhood, with its mega churches, mega malls, mc-mansions, and big hair, he follows three families as they each try to find that perfect "mega moment"(you know, when it all comes together and just for a few moments everyone is happy).

From the crowds waiting in the dawn for Be...more

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Dec 15, 2010 Gail rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Would you be willing to let a stranger spend Christmas with your family? While he takes notes? Even when he asks how much you spent on everything?

These are the questions Hank Stuever asks the reader in the acknowledgments of this book. As he hunkers down in the Texas 'burbs for the holidays, Hank tells the stories of three families as they prepare for their Christmases. All told, he'll spend Xmas '06, '07 and a bit of '08 with these people—a time frame that, for all the craziness that went down...more

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Jan 06, 2012 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociology-culture

A fantastic look at Christmas culture in America, as seen through a typical mid- to upper-class subdivision-and-mall suburb of Dallas: McMansions, big box retail, megachurches, fake tits and fake trees. In the winter of 2006, Steuver spent the holiday season with three families and experienced the shopping, decorating, consuming, churchgoing, and family stress along with them ~ a poignant time, as it was the last "big" Christmas in America for lots of people. After the economy collapsed and we f...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Sheri rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned, holiday

Review of the audiobook from Audible. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, especially as it was a refreshing change from the usual current holiday glurge. The author seems to give an honest picture of the families he followed, treating them with respect, affection, and humor. No, I don't think those attitudes are mutually exclusive. I think he did a pretty good job of capturing, from an outsider's perspective, what we all want Christmas to be, how we try to go about making it happen, and how it can s...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Sheena rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a very interesting book. I found it fascinating because I live in the DFW area and it's rather strange to see "ourselves" portrayed in a book. The author is a transplanted Oklahoman that now lives in Washington so the smug superiority attitude he exhibits gets a little old. Oklahoma is just a stone's throw from Texas so I don't get the idea that we are somehow unique for overdoing the Christmas spending and decorating everything that doesn't move in the name of religion. Texas is certain...more

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Dec 11, 2010 Ruth Ferguson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, book-club-selection

Since I am not normally a non-fiction fan, this is the first time I have read a book that takes a look at the modern day Dallas. I grew up in the heyday of the Dallas TV show of the 70s and the misconceptions of my hometown that grew from the show. However, it is interesting to see the 21st century Dallas through the eyes of a visitor. It is almost as if we have indeed morphed into the Ewing world. Perhaps because we are still a relatively “new” American city, we still have the land to do everyt...more Since I am not normally a non-fiction fan, this is the first time I have read a book that takes a look at the modern day Dallas. I grew up in the heyday of the Dallas TV show of the 70s and the misconceptions of my hometown that grew from the show. However, it is interesting to see the 21st century Dallas through the eyes of a visitor. It is almost as if we have indeed morphed into the Ewing world. Perhaps because we are still a relatively “new” American city, we still have the land to do everything B.I.G. and Tinsel’s look at three Christmas seasons in Frisco, Texas shows that Christmas is no exception.

As I listened to the early chapters, it is somewhat heartbreaking to see how superficial American Christmas celebrations are – and there is enough truth in his observations that they cannot be ignored. It makes me even more uncomfortable at the realization of my own complicity.

My personal budget can barely accommodate a Wal-Mart tree, but like Tammy the frantic holiday home decorator, I have pored over magazine and holiday catalogue layouts for years. Yet it is not the perfect look we are seeking, it is that fleeting moment of Christmas joy that we convince ourselves these well designed rooms will bring.

Fifteen years ago, very few of us in the DFW metroplex even knew of the then small city, Frisco. In 1990 the population was only 6,000 but by 2009 had exponentially grown to 100,000. It was a startling to learn that much of their infrastructure and huge growth was a result of sales tax revenue from first Stonebriar Mall and now the acres of restaurants and strip shopping centers that surround the mall and the requisite McMansions. Sadly that really epitomizes the American economy.

The book offers no profound insights but it was interesting. However, after awhile the book seems to run a bit out of steam.

My bookclub had dinner in the Frisco Square during the Christmas season (2010) and we were each disappointed in the display. There was no blowing snow and display was interesting but to hear the music you had to turn your car radio to a certain station. However even with the music it did not seem to live up to our expectation.
(less)

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Mar 08, 2010 Shannon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd like to give this 3.5 stars, but I just don't have it in me to bump it up to 4. Not that the book was bad; quite the contrary, actually. Stuever is an entertaining, if slightly hipster and derivative, writer, and the book was fairly enjoyable (thus the 3.5 stars). But it was...unsurprising. Were there any great insights we were supposed to gain as we read about three Frisco, TX, families and their observation of the Christmas season? With one single exception - a 30-something husband who cov...more I'd like to give this 3.5 stars, but I just don't have it in me to bump it up to 4. Not that the book was bad; quite the contrary, actually. Stuever is an entertaining, if slightly hipster and derivative, writer, and the book was fairly enjoyable (thus the 3.5 stars). But it was...unsurprising. Were there any great insights we were supposed to gain as we read about three Frisco, TX, families and their observation of the Christmas season? With one single exception - a 30-something husband who covers his house with lights to bring joy to people who pass by - none seemed to really know what Christmas is. Is it in the decorations? The shopping? The overloading of children with obscene amounts of gifts in the desperate search of "the moment"? I have no idea. Neither, I think, does Stuever. Or his subjects, for that matter.

I don't fault Stuever, nor do I fault his subjects. Frisco seemed very foreign to the author, a gay, liberal, East Coast media dude. In Frisco, Jesus is ALWAYS the reason for the season, and non-whites are invisible, coming out to decorate the mall when the customers are gone and the city sleeps. The mythical norm is alive and well here. People are known to be "$50k millionaires," living on the borrowed time that easy credit grants. Collectively, they're a stereotype. Did Stuever mean to provide such a whitewashed picture of this Texas city, or did he really not meet any non-Christians (aside from the few Israelis who manned a booth in the mall that sold instant snow)? Either way, the next question becomes, what was he trying to prove? That Christmas is for white Christians? That all Texans are white Christians who spend too much? I just don't know...

I'm someone who is less than enamored of Christmas, anyway. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, with its family time, good food, and lack of gift-giving pressure. Christmas is a bloated excuse for a holiday that either celebrates the winter solstice or the birth of Christ (and gets the date wrong either way). This could have been an anthropological study - indeed, that's what I hoped for - but, instead it turned out to be a very narrow description of Christmas in a small corner of the United States, and hardly representative of...anything other than that small corner. Stuever claims, in his title to be "search[ing:] for America's Christmas present." Instead he found Frisco's Christmas in 2006. Yes, he returned for short visits in 2007 and 2008, and in his afterward thanks the recession for making 2006 of interest as the last time Christmas was an all-out affair. But the descriptions of Christmas in 2007 and 2008 are too brief for a real contrast. I think Stuever, if he really wants to find "Christmas Present," needs to continue his search.(less)

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Jan 10, 2011 M. E. Kinkade rated it 3 of 5 stars

An interesting journalistic voyage into Christmas Before The Crash. Stuever follows three families in upscale Frisco (a suburb of Dallas) to chronicle the ways they celebrate Christmas, which, thanks to Stuever's cynical eye and keen sense of numbers, becomes a tale of hypocracy and commercialistic meaninglessness. It's a bit depressing, but that doesn't mean it isn't accurate.

Sadly, though, Stuever's complaints about Christmas--cost, the emphasis on more, how no amount of spending is ever enou...more

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Dec 29, 2009 Katie marked it as to-read

New Yorker Review:

In 2006, Stuever set out to characterize the experience of Christmas—its aesthetics, economics, and metaphysics—in an average Texas town. The resulting dissection of the holiday is cultural anthropology at its most exuberant. According to Stuever, fakery, not excess, is the signature of the modern American Christmas. More than twice as many synthetic Christmas trees are trimmed each year as real ones. Santa figurines at a Christmas bazaar purported to be handmade and local are...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Janel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure what kind of angle this book might take, but I was plesantly surprised on the tone and direction the book took. Hank's writing style makes the book easy to read, but it's not just a narrative of his observations. He includes history tidbits about Christmas and facts and figures as well. I found myself thinking that I wish I could get my father to read this book. He's a fanatic decorator (and not just at Christmas) and loves to look at Christmas lights.

I'm not a huge fan of holiday...more

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Dec 22, 2009 Marina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir-or-somebody-somewhere-has-th

Journalist Stuever travels to Frisco, Texas for three consecutive Christmas seasons (November to January) to invade the lives of three individuals/couples. Tammie the Christmas decorator guru who single-handedly decorates 30-40 homes in one season from Thanksgiving to December 11 (if they aren't done by then they are way behind in their planning is what she implies), Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski (http://www.trykoskichristmas.com/) whose light and music choreographed home draws hundreds to their n...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Vicki Jamison rated it 5 of 5 stars

An interesting and fun read. I was given the book by my niece who is neighbors with one of the couples in the book. This is how I came to have a signed copy of the book. I enjoyed the stories and the style so much that I subsequently found another book by Stuever to read: Off Ramp. Reading this book, I snickered to myself, I cringed a little, and I got outright upset about some of the behaviors he wrote about. This is a Christmas story initiating in and around the Big D. If you know anything abo...more

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Dec 26, 2010 Elizabeth Olson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2010, christmas

What started out as an exploration of America's consumer Christmas culture, developed over the several years Stuever researched and lived among his mall-loving Texan subjects, into a clear-eyed, but also respectful, even loving, look not only at the shopping madness, but also into the hearts of people he came to be close to. Beyond the gizmos and fad gifts, and the Black Friday frenzy, the residents of Frisco, Texas, want only what we all want: connection, and, as one of puts it, "the total mome...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Christine Donoghue rated it 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't put this down. I just bought it for a friend, and that is why it is on my mind, to write this review.

The way we celebrate Christmas in America is really over-the-top these days, and it seems very unique to America, although I could be wrong.

The book follows some people from Texas, who all have a big connection to Christmas in some way. A woman who has a business "putting up Christmas" for busy working women... a guy who makes one of those giant light displays set to music... and more...more

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Nov 01, 2009 Flora rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I don't know why people describe this book as funny ... it seemed to tell it like it is, almost dispassionately. (Why yes, people in the wealthier Dallas suburbs DO do all these things.) Someone else used the word "poignant," and I guess that fits it pretty well. What I appreciated most was that the author didn't seem to exaggerate anything, which is prone to happen when coasties write about Texas.

The book was tightly written -- almost too tightly, since I wanted to know more about all these ch...more

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Dec 30, 2012 Evan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is how Christmas began, after all, way before the time of Christ (and for centuries after his death), when it was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice. People gathered and danced by fires. The harvests were in and everyone gorged.

As a newspaper entertainment journalist, I have stood on red carpets. I have talked to Meryl Streep and Jude Law and Kate Winslet on Oscar night. At parties, I've made small talk with Beyoncé and Helen Mirren and Jake Gyllenhaal. I have thought of something t...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Derek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hank Stuever took off 15 months as a culture writer for the Washington Post Style section to find people in “drought-prone Sunbelt states dreaming of white Christmases they know will probably never come” (11). He lands in Plano and Frisco, Texas, stalking four people: Tammie, who decorates houses for women who don’t have time to “figure out the mantel” (22); Caroll, who every year on Black Friday gets a free snowglobe at JC Penney; and Jeff and Bridgette, who stage a visible-from-space lightshow...more Hank Stuever took off 15 months as a culture writer for the Washington Post Style section to find people in “drought-prone Sunbelt states dreaming of white Christmases they know will probably never come” (11). He lands in Plano and Frisco, Texas, stalking four people: Tammie, who decorates houses for women who don’t have time to “figure out the mantel” (22); Caroll, who every year on Black Friday gets a free snowglobe at JC Penney; and Jeff and Bridgette, who stage a visible-from-space lightshow on their lawn. Throughout the book, Stuever mostly observes. “I cast myself merely as an extra,” he writes, “a Wise Man in a purple velour bathrobe and a cardboard Burger King crown” (5).

Stuever spends two days in the library finding out about the dirt on which the stores were built. He shares the history of Christmas lights, Christmas trees, and nativities. He laments the changing tenor of letters to Santa, becoming “more terse and specific in their requests” after 1903. But his most interesting research is experiential, where he finds a strangely normal and abnormally strange world full of chain restaurants, box stores, boutiques, and Christmas bazaar’s with plaques for sale that say “On Dasher, on Dancer, on Master, on Visa” (39).

He goes to church with Caroll and finds Reverend True Religion Jeans wearing an unconstructed blazer stenciled and embroidered with a combination of romantic vampire touches: griffins, royal crests, gothic crosses, and vine-like paisley swirls” (100). He doesn’t really like the sermon – “There are five ways. There are eight steps. There are four keys” – but then, tired of his own church sarcasm, he writes, “What the hell… I lift my arms. I hold my palms” (104). Stuever’s willingness to find redemption anywhere – from Costco to a Costco-sized church - saves his book and, it would seem, his life, from nihilism.

Stuever spends a lot of time in the mall because the mall is a major character in American drama: “In zombie movies, the last surviving humans find refuge in the mall,” he writes. “In Christmas movies, the mall mayhem triggers the protagonist’s profound insight that none of it matters so much as love” (69). But he’s not cynical. Music may be “piped in from small speakers in every tree and planter… a Nora Jones and Maroon 5 fantasia,” but that homogeny isn’t something to disdain (57). “Chain stores,” he writes, “are not merely redundant: chains bind us together, make us familiar to one another no matter what state we live in, give us comfort as they take away a sense of the local” (68). He speaks in mall language, in mall comparisons. He describes someone’s inflection as “that same chipper tone as the girls at Banana Republic” (16), a time of year as “before the trees are lit in the home-and-garden department of Target” (19).

What’s between the stores is equally important and worthy of description. He talks to the Israeli man selling fake snow at a kiosk who just “finished his compulsory service in the Israeli army,” stationed on the Gaza Strip (74). He spends an evening with the Spanish-speaking immigrants who do the Christmas decorations for the mall in one night. For Stuever, what it seems to come down to is mall-ography, “where you identify yourself more by your box-store preference than anything else… describing yourself… as part of an evolving autobiography of where you shop” (66). He specializes in the special language of capitalism.
The language of capitalism and the language of good writing meets in specificity. Your daughter doesn’t want the 7th Generation iPod Nano, she wants the 8th. Stuever loves the three-detailed detail, where Christmas decorations are “faux-finished, plasticized, and derivative” (27). It might be “seasonal table runners from Pottery Barn” (22), “prelit plastic garland adorned with stiffened tulle ribbon” (28), “honey-hued jeweled cones” (28), “sugar-encrusted plastic pears on plastic ivy” (34), or a “berry-ball wreath candleholder from Crate & Barrel” (22), but whatever it is, it is probably hidden in “gold-flecked floral wrap” (121) or positioned next to “porcelain houses with tiny lightbulbs inside (137). Such detailed descriptions are one way of saying a thing is not only what it is, but also not some other. It is not some other thing from some other season. It is the new thing from Target, TJ Maxx, Kohl’s, the Starbucks next to the Chili’s and the FedEx Kinkos. Can a writer go overboard with such specificity? I suppose. Usually it means good writing, and here it is especially apropos. If it feels like too much, good. It is too much. That’s exactly the point.(less)

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Oct 27, 2010 Caro rated it 5 of 5 stars

There's a few oft-remarked-upon parts of Christmas; our own irrepressible nostalgia, the religiously crazed and their antics, and - the most frequently mentioned with chagrin - our over-commercialization of a holiday which we all feel should actually be about someone who purportedly started life in a barn with next to nothing. This book is simultaneously about none of all that and about nothing but all that.

Hank Steuver moved to Frisco, Texas for the Christmas of 2006, and the three families he...more

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Dec 23, 2010 Dawn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, knowledge-nf

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 03, 2010 Vy rated it 4 of 5 stars

If you're looking for a feel-good Christmas book, this is not it. Stuever gives us a close look at what an exurban Christmas looked like in 2006, before things went bust. The setting is Frisco, TX, but except for references to A&M and mild weather, it really could have been just about any place in the country similarly afflicted with affluenza. He tells us how the season plays out, from the shopping and decorating crescendo that starts in the fall, through to the packing up of ornaments and...more

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Dec 07, 2009 pianogal rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I thought this book was interesting - if only for the fact that it gave a good description (in hindsight, of course) of the state of the economy from 06-08 and it's effect on Christmas. Some of the people I just wanted to smack for the careless spending of imaginary money.

Also, got a little tired here and there of the author's Blue State East Coast liberalism. He thinks he's smarter than us Red Staters in the middle of the country, just because we believe in something he doesn't. He's allowed hi...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Lorrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was released late in '09, and that's unfortunate. I wish there had been more pre-Christmas time for readers to find the book and get into it. Hank Stuever did some great participant observation about over-the-top decorating in Frisco, TX. I never dreamed that so many people (Griswalds) are into lighting. Stuever delivered an interesting
facet of this affluent suburb, but he managed to keep it funny and non-critical. He even developed warm friendships with the people he studied.

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Nov 04, 2011 Kory Booher rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very enjoyable commentary and insights on the celebration of Christmas not only in the US, but in Dallas Texas. The author does his best to not trip over his own ego and bias-however in the end he has a hard time shielding his self righteousness from the reader.

I gave it four stars because it was enjoyable- and beyond that, it made me think causing a bit of introspection and ultimately did change how I view and will celebrate Christmas in my own home.

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Dec 14, 2010 Sharon Archer added it

well...there were a number of themes in this book....mega churches, overblown decorations, rampant commercialism...the most disturbing to me was friends who couldn't go see a dying friend because they didn't want to see her like that....folks will send cards and otherwise put things that unpleasant aside...if you have friends or family that are ill, see them and talk to them...can't wait to see what my book club says about this!!

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Nov 01, 2009 Amanda marked it as to-read

Our little (okay, not-so-little) suburb is the backdrop for this new book!

Amazon.com says: In Tinsel, Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas, a suburb at once all-American and completely itself, to tell the story of the nation's most over-the-top celebration: Christmas.

I am oh-so very curious...to see...if this does indeed capture what Frisco is all about!

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Oct 20, 2010 Geralee rated it 4 of 5 stars

Enjoyable and remarkable look at Christmas celebrated in Frisco, Texas in 2006 before America's economic troubles. Written by a journalist, and you can feel his note-taking presence at the family celebrations and shopping excursions he was generously allowed to attend. Most enjoyable to me were his forays into Pastor Keith's megachurch. The end of the book brings you up to date with trips back in 2007 and 2008. Very touching.

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Dec 19, 2009 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not a history of past Christmases, but a snapshot view of Christmas in the early 21st century. Sort of documenting the holiday lives of three families in a Dallas suburb, and told from the perspective of an East Coast liberal, I expected more of a satire or at least some snarky writing, but the author was clearly taken in by the kindness of the families who allowed the author into their lives. The veracity of the author's emotions resonated with me, and I really enjoyed reading it.

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About Hank Stuever

Hank Stuever was born in 1968 in Oklahoma City and grew up there, and left, and got into journalism. He has worked for newspapers in Albuquerque and Austin and, since 1999, has covered pop culture for The Washington Post's Style section. He is currently the paper's TV critic. OFF RAMP, a collection of his feature stories and essays, was published in 2004. His 2009 book, TINSEL, follows three subur...more

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