Mysteries of Love and Grief: Reflections on a Plainswoman’s Life

by Sandra Scofield

Frieda Harms was born into a farming family in Indian Territory in 1906. Widowed at thirty and left with three children in the midst of the Great Depression, she worked as a farmer, a railroad cook, a mill worker, and a nurse in four states. She died in 1983.
            Sandra Scofield spent most of her childhood with her grandmother Frieda and remained close to her in adulthood. When Frieda died, Sandra received her Bible and boxes of her photographs, letters, and notes. For thirty years, Sandra dipped into that cache.
            Sandra always sensed an undercurrent of hard feelings within her grandmother, but it was not until she sifted through Frieda’s belongings that she began to understand how much her life had demanded, and how much she had given. At the same time, questions in Sandra’s own history began to be answered, especially about the tug-of-war between her mother and grandmother. At last, in Mysteries of Love and Grief, Scofield wrestles with the meaning of her grandmother’s saga of labor and loss, trying to balance her need to understand with respect for Frieda’s mystery.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published August 15, 2015

Reviews

[Kristine Hall]

As the title indicates, Mysteries of Love and Grief: Reflections on a Plainswoman's Life truly is author Sandra Scofield's reflections about the life of her grandmother, Frieda Harms, born into a farming family living in Indian Territory, 1906. Scofield clearly did her research to create snapshots of not just Frieda's life, but the whole world and mindset of the women and men of that same era. As Scofield writes in an attempt to better understand her grandmother, the author's frustration and pain are tangible because she realizes the unnecessary hardships the people in her family endured and how much was left unsaid. Scofield finds that in her family, grief motivated many things, and says "Grief sometimes becomes anger, but how does it turn into a person's engine?" She desperately seeks to answer her question hoping that an answer will help her forgive and mend and comprehend. Full review on Hall Ways http://kristinehallways.blogspot.com/...

[Rebecca Gabriel]

MYSTERIES OF LOVE AND GRIEF by Sandra Scofield weaves a tapestry of family, event and place with great originality and vivid truth. Nothing about the story of Ms. Scofield’s grandmother, Frieda, is conventional, nor is the incisive and layered structure of the narrative. The stories overlap and build on one another, following the tributaries of fact, emotion, and event. The reader is drawn into the core of the characters and stories, much in the same way one experiences memory and the untidy unfolding of life. Ms. Scofield’s story about the birth and loss of her son, is unforgettable and equals or surpasses Anais Nin’s story of the same subject. The stories in “Mysteries” is a treasure trove of gems, collected together to dazzle and incise the heart – R. Gabriel

[Len Joy]

Novelist Sandra Scofield’s memoir, Mysteries of Love and Grief, is composed of a series of essays about her family. Frieda, her maternal grandmother, widowed in her 30s with three kids to raise in the midst of the Great Depression in hardscrabble Texas, is the principal character in an ensemble that includes Edith, Scofield’s free-spirited, fragile and doomed mother, an ever-changing cast of husbands and boyfriends, and Scofield, the precocious, spoiled, determined-to-escape child of these complicated women.

This story feels like Scofield sitting in a comfortable chair telling us stories about her family. In the first chapter, “The Story Test,” Scofield explains how she came to write this book about her grandmother. I finished it and thought, “Okay, I understand this woman, Frieda.” And then I read the next essay, about the distribution of Frieda’s meager estate and I was surprised. Surprise was a common element in all of these essays, which I guess shouldn’t be surprising. Scofield probes the mysteries of her grandmother and her mother and the father she never knew and the baby she lost and with each discovery there is more mystery.

Scofield has a clear eye. She loves Frieda and her mother and many of the other characters, but is able to still see clearly both their mysterious strengths (such as Frieda’s never complain – never explain guiding principle) and their failings. She’s writing about real people and she makes them real for us. They are unbelievably generous and courageous and petty and shortsighted. It is written with love. She treats everyone fairly, even the characters she doesn’t love.

At the end of Scofield’s chapter, “Anger” she learns that because of her misdemeanor drug offense during the early 70s, the FBI came to her grandmother’s house to intimidate her, but her grandmother stared them down.

Scofield writes: “I hadn’t learned the beautiful power of anger when it is rooted in God’s love…I had never seen it on the faces of strong people standing up to injustice and suffering because I had never looked…

Something stirred: a sorrow for the many time I had hurt her with my absences and my wasted opportunities and her steady love. I ached for her to care about something better, steadier and more deserving than me, something worthy of her defiance. Something holy.”

A poignant, powerful story, beautifully written.

[Tangled in Text]

This story was repetitive. I wish it would have gone in chronological order because with it jumping around sporadically it ended up explaining the same facts multiple times. As well it sometimes used an entire chapter to copy an excerpt from another of her books, which felt like cheating to plagiarize your own work in a sense to fill space and once again repeat what you've already covered in other books. I was disappointed with how I thought this story was going to play out and how it was really structured. The cover is misleading. It's not about an old love that lasted through time even though it does mention it with surface detail multiple times throughout the book. It feels like Sandra still wasn't quite ready to write this book because she is struggling as she writes to figure out why her grandmother was so negative. This was a bit depressing of a book with all the hate spewed between family and grudges and prides kept among themselves. I couldn't believe how many times each person in this family got married and divorced. It was hard to follow with it not being in chronological order as well as repeating facts. This seemed more focused on Sandra the child, instead of her grandmother because really she still doesn't know much about her. I do enjoy the idea of her receiving this box full of history, but I wish the story was structured differently. I didn't enjoy that she called her grandmother Mommy, her mother, Mama, her aunt rightmama, and so on which just added to the confusion as well as trying to speak from different points of view saying her mom (meaning her actual mom), then speaking for her mother saying her mom (meaning the grandmother). It was hard to keep track. Lastly, the chapter titles were misleading. She would go through the entire chapter recounting the misfortune that happened then throw in the chapter title because it felt like she had to, but really the chapter had nothing to do with the subject topic.

[Story Circle Book Reviews]

As an author, I am always aware of how much design matters. Scofield's new book, Mysteries of Love and Grief: Reflections on a Plainswoman's Life, is beautifully designed. I would have picked it up on the merit of its cover alone.

Within the beautiful cover lies a journey that is intensely feminine, an examination of the author's grandmother's life as well as her relationship with most of the women within her family. And nothing could be more complicated than how we relate to our mothers, our grandmothers, and eventually, our own daughters. While an obviously cathartic journey for the author, the story is also universal in its reach into the generations.

My only complaint is that the title is misleading. I thought I was going to read about a true plainswoman, living a life on the land. Scofield's upbringing and her grandmother's life was more a hardscrabble township existence. Still, the reader is drawn into this discontinuous narrative simply to find out where the author is headed since at times she seems not to know where she ended up, and is finding herself in the writing.

The author's tendency to dip into her previous writings for answers is unique and indicative of how many of us who live a life of words find the answers to our own questions.

And finally, one of the best gauges as to how to view a book just closed is to ask, "Am I glad I read this?" And the answer to Mysteries of Love and Grief is a resounding yes.

by Amy Hale Auker
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

[Nicole]

This book was about a women and her heartbreaking view of her life as a child to adulthood. She tells the story of how she grew up without her mother and grew close to her grandmother. As she grows up the family turmoil gets worse and puts a stop on her relationship with her grandmother. She tries to tell the story of her Grandmother's life but finds it difficult due to missing pieces and understanding through a child's memory. This story is sad. It is full of holes about a Grandma she loved and feels she lost a chance to get answers from at the end of her life. This book was so difficult to keep up with. I could not keep up with which person she was talking in reference to. She would go from one year to a totally different year. It was not in Chronological order and it was most difficult to keep track with. One chapter someone had died. The next she was talking as if they had never died. I wasn't sure if this book was about her or her grandmother. The synopsis is misleading to this story. There seems to be chapters missing. There is a chapter heading then three pages of nothing written. There was a lot of repeating throughout the book about the same information.

[Lorilei Gonzales]

I was given an ebook copy of this book for a fair review.

I have no idea why I was expecting a Little House on the Prairie type experience (maybe because she references the series a few times in the book), but this was not it. That’s not a bad thing when you consider that Little House glosses over things like extreme poverty, death, and doing illegal activities (shame on you, Pa). The pain and confusion Scofield feels for her mother and grandmother are evident throughout the memoir. While I was confused now and then (I could never get the hang of her calling everyone by first name rather than “Mother” and “Aunt”), I could relate to the mixed feelings about family. I know all too well the wanting to move away and move on, but finding yourself running back to where you came from. My takeaway from this writing was that we don’t always get to know the truth, definitely not all of it, but we should embrace the love while it’s with us. Also, Texas breeds some strong ass, independent women. I think I would love having a coffee talk with Scofield.

[Tricia Fields]

What a beautiful book. The writing was pure and from the heart, honest and heart breaking, but mostly hopeful and motivated by love. Here's a quote from the first few pages that convinced me I'd found a book that would take me on a compelling journey. "When the dream inside you is as vivid as the one you are living, when there is no one to answer the questions that plague you, and your melancholy feels like a chasm, it is thrilling to discover that stories fill you up." - I thought, that's it. She summed up an entire life for me in one sentence. That's the power Scofield has as an author. The mystery of her life if unfolded, not in chronological order as some reviewers for some reason required, but in layers, complex and extraordinary, as life often is. Scofield is a longtime favorite of mine - a finalist for the National Book Award. Grab a cup of hot tea and a comfy chair and settle in for a nice long read.

[Blogging For The Love Of Authors And Their Books]

****Nic's Review***

I was given an ARC for my honest review.

This book was about a women and her heartbreaking view of her life as a child to adulthood. She tells the story of how she grew up without her mother and grew close to her grandmother. As she grows up the family turmoil gets worse and puts a stop on her relationship with her grandmother. She tries to tell the story of her Grandmother's life but finds it difficult due to missing pieces and understanding through a child's memory. This story is sad. It is full of holes about a Grandma she loved and feels she lost a chance to get answers from at the end of her life.

[Mara]

A link to my review at the Missoulian newspaper:

http://missoulian.com/entertainment/b...

[Lori Tobias]

Sandra has been my mentor for many years. This book, as Occasions of Sin, spreads a little more light on the sorrow, compassion and intelligence that informs every word she writes.

[Janet Durham]

Pretty depressing - dysfunctional family