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The Shoebox Bible
As a child, during a cold, dark wartime winter, the author found a cardboard shoebox hidden beneath a closet floorboard. On ragtag scraps of paper, his mother carefully copied snippets of Scripture. Was this Shoebox Bible related to why his father ran away? Years later, on her deathbed, his mother may help solve the mystery. Sad, funny, and inspiring.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published August 8, 2006
114 people are currently reading
1623 people want to read
About the author
Alan Bradley
33 books8,637 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he remained for 25 years before taking early retirement to write in 1994.
He became the first President of the Saskatoon Writers, and a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. His children's stories were published in The Canadian Children's Annual, and his short story, Meet Miss Mullen, was the first recipient of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature.
For a number of years, he regularly taught Script Writing and Television Production courses at the University of Saskatchewan (Extension Division) at both beginner and advanced levels.
His fiction has been published in literary journals and he has given many public readings in schools and galleries. His short stories have been broadcast by CBC Radio.
He was a founding member of The Casebook of Saskatoon, a society devoted to the study of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian writings. Here, he met the late Dr. William A.S. Sarjeant, with whom he collaborated on their classic book, Ms Holmes of Baker Street. This work put forth the startling theory that the Great Detective was a woman, and was greeted upon publication with what has been described as "a firestorm of controversy".
The release of Ms. Holmes resulted in national media coverage, with the authors embarking upon an extensive series of interviews, radio and television appearances, and a public debate at Toronto's Harbourfront. His lifestyle and humorous pieces have appeared in The Globe and Mail and The National Post.
His book The Shoebox Bible (McClelland and Stewart, 2006) has been compared with Tuesdays With Morrie and Mr. God, This is Anna.
In July of 2007 he won the Debut Dagger Award of the (British) Crimewriter's Association for his novel The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first of a series featuring eleven year old Flavia de Luce, which has since won the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel,the 2010 Dilys Award,the Spotted Owl Award, and the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie has also been nominated for the Macavity, the Barry, and the Arthur Awards.
Alan Bradley lives in Malta with his wife Shirley and two calculating cats.
With an education in electronic engineering, Alan worked at numerous radio and television stations in Ontario, and at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, before becoming Director of Television Engineering in the media centre at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, where he remained for 25 years before taking early retirement to write in 1994.
He became the first President of the Saskatoon Writers, and a founding member of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. His children's stories were published in The Canadian Children's Annual, and his short story, Meet Miss Mullen, was the first recipient of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild Award for Children's Literature.
For a number of years, he regularly taught Script Writing and Television Production courses at the University of Saskatchewan (Extension Division) at both beginner and advanced levels.
His fiction has been published in literary journals and he has given many public readings in schools and galleries. His short stories have been broadcast by CBC Radio.
He was a founding member of The Casebook of Saskatoon, a society devoted to the study of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian writings. Here, he met the late Dr. William A.S. Sarjeant, with whom he collaborated on their classic book, Ms Holmes of Baker Street. This work put forth the startling theory that the Great Detective was a woman, and was greeted upon publication with what has been described as "a firestorm of controversy".
The release of Ms. Holmes resulted in national media coverage, with the authors embarking upon an extensive series of interviews, radio and television appearances, and a public debate at Toronto's Harbourfront. His lifestyle and humorous pieces have appeared in The Globe and Mail and The National Post.
His book The Shoebox Bible (McClelland and Stewart, 2006) has been compared with Tuesdays With Morrie and Mr. God, This is Anna.
In July of 2007 he won the Debut Dagger Award of the (British) Crimewriter's Association for his novel The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first of a series featuring eleven year old Flavia de Luce, which has since won the 2009 Agatha Award for Best First Novel,the 2010 Dilys Award,the Spotted Owl Award, and the 2010 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie has also been nominated for the Macavity, the Barry, and the Arthur Awards.
Alan Bradley lives in Malta with his wife Shirley and two calculating cats.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
January 26, 2021
Any book that includes my grandmother must rate five stars out of five, right?
Let me try to be objective for a minute. This memoir concerns a boy whose father abandoned his family (wife, two daughters, son, then two). It was WWII, so King and country offer some extenuating circumstances, but after the war there is no reconciliation. The father makes a single additional appearance. He returns to say he is leaving again.
That man, the father, was my grandmother's brother, Joe.
Spoiler alert. My grandmother makes a brief appearance near the end of the book. She tells the author that his father has sometimes, late at night, called her through the years. No one ever saw him again, but he told his sister that he had wasted his life. My grandmother told Alan not to tell his mother of these calls, and he didn't.
It's Alan's mother who is the hero of the book. It's her shoebox bible that is the Bible of the title, and it is stuffed with mementos of her marriage and her loneliness. Her lifelong hope that Joe is going to return is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming.
When I was half-way through the book my brother asked me what I thought. "The writing is very good," I said. "The drama is understated, though." I had to wrestle some with my expectations. I was waiting for something more operatic, more painful and splitting. But it's not that kind of book. It's not "filmable," if you know what I mean. The conflict is muted, the sad beauty given prominence.
And what a beautiful book, Alan. Tremendous.
Let me try to be objective for a minute. This memoir concerns a boy whose father abandoned his family (wife, two daughters, son, then two). It was WWII, so King and country offer some extenuating circumstances, but after the war there is no reconciliation. The father makes a single additional appearance. He returns to say he is leaving again.
That man, the father, was my grandmother's brother, Joe.
Spoiler alert. My grandmother makes a brief appearance near the end of the book. She tells the author that his father has sometimes, late at night, called her through the years. No one ever saw him again, but he told his sister that he had wasted his life. My grandmother told Alan not to tell his mother of these calls, and he didn't.
It's Alan's mother who is the hero of the book. It's her shoebox bible that is the Bible of the title, and it is stuffed with mementos of her marriage and her loneliness. Her lifelong hope that Joe is going to return is as heartbreaking as it is heartwarming.
When I was half-way through the book my brother asked me what I thought. "The writing is very good," I said. "The drama is understated, though." I had to wrestle some with my expectations. I was waiting for something more operatic, more painful and splitting. But it's not that kind of book. It's not "filmable," if you know what I mean. The conflict is muted, the sad beauty given prominence.
And what a beautiful book, Alan. Tremendous.
September 13, 2016
I do not understand why this book is out of print and so hard to get. It is an amazing book on so many levels. The author's mother was abandoned by her husband and left to raise three children, of whom he was the youngest on very little. They were so poor that apparently they didn't even have a Bible and after church on Sundays she would read the Bible at church. On scraps of paper and bits of cardboard she copied the down verses and chapters that spoke to her situation of the moment. These she kept in a shoebox in the closet. This book will make you sad, amazed and thankful. As the author says on page 177: " We are, each of us, a story told by God: a story of great sadness and great joy, but one that ends always in glory."
November 20, 2014
"Some children are born seeking God outside themselves, and it is a lifelong quest, but one that can never be fulfilled, so that they are often left, in the end, sitting among the remnants of the things they have accumulated, and love is not one of them.
Yet other children - born in awe of the roaring torrents of their own arteries, the wide deserts of their skins, the uncharted forests of their silken hair, and the craggy mountains of their own knees, knuckles, and toes - sense instinctively from birth that the Creator is within, that in the hidden depths of movement lies the secret of existence."
Yet other children - born in awe of the roaring torrents of their own arteries, the wide deserts of their skins, the uncharted forests of their silken hair, and the craggy mountains of their own knees, knuckles, and toes - sense instinctively from birth that the Creator is within, that in the hidden depths of movement lies the secret of existence."
July 24, 2017
Alan Bradley writes so beautifully and tenderly of his life in Canada with his mother and sisters after his father leaves the family and they struggle day to day to live. The shoebox bible refers to a box kept by his mother of bible verses that Bradley as a young child discovers. After reading this, I am pretty sure that he used his sisters as models for Falvia's sisters in his Flavia de Luce mystery series. I rarely re-read books but this is one I definitely would.
December 5, 2017
I enjoy Alan Bradley's mystery books and assumed this book was another novel. What I discovered, instead, was an autobiography. It is a sweet recollection of a young man and the bond with his mother. He finds a shoebox full of bits of paper which tell his mother's story and of her faith.
I also saw the seeds of the characters in the Flavia mysteries.
A book of my choice.
I also saw the seeds of the characters in the Flavia mysteries.
A book of my choice.
May 24, 2021
What a beautiful book - a loving tribute to his mother and his life growing up. Sad, but also filled with hope and funny antidotes, this book will stay with me for a long time.
January 9, 2018
My first book of 2018 and a 5 star one at that! Rarely do I give out 5 stars to a book. I think that I read it at the perfect time because I started it the same day that my older brother went home after a 3 day visit. We talked and reminisced for hours, obviously reading this account hit a chord within me. I know that some reviewers felt the writing was disjointed but I disagree, the writer knew perfectly how to formulate his own story. Now to find something just as good, sigh.
July 19, 2015
I really wanted to like this book. I really did. It's an autobiography of sorts from one of my favorite authors. It talks of spiritual matters and quotes bible verses (a subject near and dear to me). Alas, it was not meant to be.
Not all of us can write about our own lives with the same objective eye as a biographer reviewing our life from a distance. This certainly seems to be the case for Mr. Bradley's book which I had to force myself to finish.
His fiction excels at the rare quirky descriptions, but here his metaphors and similes were so thick they continually built brick walls of words that obscured what they were talking about. It became more and more difficult to knock down those walls in order to continue reading. To make matters worse, the events of his life (while certainly not easy for anyone to thrive in) seemed to deify his mother into an almost Mother Teresa like figure.
The whole book takes on a rather maudlin tone as a result of this. Indeed, there is very little story and a chopped up timeline of meandering & random memories that really only serve as a way for Mr. Bradley to both grieve and memorialize his recently deceased mother. Furthermore, the book description promises some great epiphany in relation to the title (a project of his mother's) but it simply does not deliver. It is certainly therapeutic for the author to have written this, but perhaps it was not wise to share.
Not all of us can write about our own lives with the same objective eye as a biographer reviewing our life from a distance. This certainly seems to be the case for Mr. Bradley's book which I had to force myself to finish.
His fiction excels at the rare quirky descriptions, but here his metaphors and similes were so thick they continually built brick walls of words that obscured what they were talking about. It became more and more difficult to knock down those walls in order to continue reading. To make matters worse, the events of his life (while certainly not easy for anyone to thrive in) seemed to deify his mother into an almost Mother Teresa like figure.
The whole book takes on a rather maudlin tone as a result of this. Indeed, there is very little story and a chopped up timeline of meandering & random memories that really only serve as a way for Mr. Bradley to both grieve and memorialize his recently deceased mother. Furthermore, the book description promises some great epiphany in relation to the title (a project of his mother's) but it simply does not deliver. It is certainly therapeutic for the author to have written this, but perhaps it was not wise to share.
April 28, 2019
After many years of no luck, I finally found this out-of-print book available on iBooks. I’m so glad I did.
It’s a memoir of the author’s life, but it puts all the focus on his mother, her heartbreak, and how her hope and faith kept her going.
You won’t find great dramatic highs and lows, just a beautifully written account of the life of a family held together by a mother.
It’s a memoir of the author’s life, but it puts all the focus on his mother, her heartbreak, and how her hope and faith kept her going.
You won’t find great dramatic highs and lows, just a beautifully written account of the life of a family held together by a mother.
December 3, 2011
What a lovely tribute to a wonderful lady! Thank you so much for sharing your family with us in the very endearing tale of your childhood and the great life you had. (I actually loved creamed peas on toast and thought it was a treat! I never knew we were eating it because we were poor.)
March 15, 2015
Amazing storytelling
Alan Bradley has a gift of using words that describe a moment in time so accurately and intimately, you feel it's immense power and are transported there.
Alan Bradley has a gift of using words that describe a moment in time so accurately and intimately, you feel it's immense power and are transported there.
September 22, 2017
This book was just ok. Could have been much better. I liked the basis of the story, but the telling of it lacked a lot. Sometimes I just didn't know what he was talking about. He left out many details that would have enhanced the story. One example, he mentioned his wife in passing. But he had never shown any romantic interests at all in the narrative. He never mentioned her again.
January 13, 2018
If Scripture offends you or if an author's meandering from past to present gets under your skin then this is a read that you probably won't enjoy. That is exactly what Bradley does in this short book. He tells his life story in just this manner. Some found the book to be disjointed but I really enjoyed how he brings his relation with his mother full circle.
May 21, 2011
I loved this poignant memoir of Canadian writer Alan Brady's childhood and the death of his mother. The book is not on the shelves of many libraries, nor can you purchase it at a reasonable price. I came to have it through inter-library loan. But since I've loved his Flavia de Luce mysteries, I pursued it, my loan copy coming from Vancouver, Washington.
My favorite parts of the book were at the end where he visits his old neighborhood and comes across the "well-oiled" resident of his former home, who insists on taking him down to the pub for a pint which he obviously does not need himself. As the old fellow goes in to find his coat, which he is already wearing, Brady runs as fast as he can to get out of there. Then there is the Christmas pageant in his former church where his second sister takes him up to look at the manger scene. He is very young and has to be lifted up to see over the Communion rail. "That's the Baby Jesus" she tells him. I can't believe my eyes. ... "that's Brazen Betty!" he tells her in a louder voice. "Sh! It's the Baby Jesus." "It isn't! It's Brazen Betty!" He could not be fooled: that midnite hair, that red slash of mouth, those vigilant eyes. They may be wrapped in swaddling clothes but it is his oldest sister's doll.
He has a close relationship with his mother who never gave up over the years as a single, abandoned woman, and at her passing, he comes to an unusual decision about her Shoebox Bible in which she kept Bible verses and photos that described her own life and brought her comfort. This is a special, sweet book worth looking for.
My favorite parts of the book were at the end where he visits his old neighborhood and comes across the "well-oiled" resident of his former home, who insists on taking him down to the pub for a pint which he obviously does not need himself. As the old fellow goes in to find his coat, which he is already wearing, Brady runs as fast as he can to get out of there. Then there is the Christmas pageant in his former church where his second sister takes him up to look at the manger scene. He is very young and has to be lifted up to see over the Communion rail. "That's the Baby Jesus" she tells him. I can't believe my eyes. ... "that's Brazen Betty!" he tells her in a louder voice. "Sh! It's the Baby Jesus." "It isn't! It's Brazen Betty!" He could not be fooled: that midnite hair, that red slash of mouth, those vigilant eyes. They may be wrapped in swaddling clothes but it is his oldest sister's doll.
He has a close relationship with his mother who never gave up over the years as a single, abandoned woman, and at her passing, he comes to an unusual decision about her Shoebox Bible in which she kept Bible verses and photos that described her own life and brought her comfort. This is a special, sweet book worth looking for.
November 7, 2015
A melancholy, but not mawkish, lamentation of abandonment. The wandering father who leaves his family, never to return. Two older sisters who torment their little brother. A mother who barely held her family together. And a shoebox which held her hope, her anger, her lvoe and her faith: sections of the Bible written on the back of scraps of paper and cardboard.
"This cardboard box — this Shoebox Bible — has been my mother's test and her testament; her anchor and her sail."
"All that I am, all that I ever have been, and all that I ever will be has been hammered out and shaped on the forge of my mother's iron faith: a faith of such strength and utility that — in the same way that a scribbled message is safest from the sea's fury in a fragile glass bottle — it could be compassed only in an old and dusty cardboard shoebox."
The author has written/is writing the Flavia de Luce novels. Reading Flavia, I always wondered about his Bible knowledge. This book tells of his childhood in the Anglican church *and* his two older sisters *and* his scientific bent. More than a few clues from whence Flavia's sisters were drawn.
"This cardboard box — this Shoebox Bible — has been my mother's test and her testament; her anchor and her sail."
"All that I am, all that I ever have been, and all that I ever will be has been hammered out and shaped on the forge of my mother's iron faith: a faith of such strength and utility that — in the same way that a scribbled message is safest from the sea's fury in a fragile glass bottle — it could be compassed only in an old and dusty cardboard shoebox."
The author has written/is writing the Flavia de Luce novels. Reading Flavia, I always wondered about his Bible knowledge. This book tells of his childhood in the Anglican church *and* his two older sisters *and* his scientific bent. More than a few clues from whence Flavia's sisters were drawn.
May 6, 2015
This poignant memoir, a tribute to his mother, is by the same author as the Flavia De Luce series. As one reads it, we recognize Flavia's rather nasty sisters in his two older sisters. His family also dealt with the absence of a parent. His father abandoned the family when Bradley was only two years old. His mother never stopped loving and pining for her runaway husband. Alan Bradley also seems to have been a bit of a child prodigy. All sounds familiar, right?
The family was so poor that they did not even own a Bible. After church on Sundays, his mother copied texts that spoke to her at that moment, on scraps of paper, the back of cereal boxes or receipts and stored them in a shoebox. Some of them are heart breaking.
This book is apparently difficult to find although the Surrey Public Library and the Fraser Valley Public Library both have several copies. It is out of print but the author is working having it re-printed because of demand.
The family was so poor that they did not even own a Bible. After church on Sundays, his mother copied texts that spoke to her at that moment, on scraps of paper, the back of cereal boxes or receipts and stored them in a shoebox. Some of them are heart breaking.
This book is apparently difficult to find although the Surrey Public Library and the Fraser Valley Public Library both have several copies. It is out of print but the author is working having it re-printed because of demand.
May 5, 2015
I am a fan of Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce books, but was intrigued by the fact that this memoir got splendid reviews, yet was unavailable in print edition for less than $200. I bought it on Amazon for the Kindle for PC.
Marvelously written, with detail and insight that made me think of Harper Lee, this is definitely one of my favorite books, ever. Mr. Bradley's mother left a true treasure for her son in the old Shoebox. Even the materials she wrote (old cereal boxes, can labels, newsprint) added immeasurable richness.
I surely wish there were print copies available at reasonable prices so I could buy one to keep in my personal library, another to put in the public library where I work, and a couple more for gifts.
Marvelously written, with detail and insight that made me think of Harper Lee, this is definitely one of my favorite books, ever. Mr. Bradley's mother left a true treasure for her son in the old Shoebox. Even the materials she wrote (old cereal boxes, can labels, newsprint) added immeasurable richness.
I surely wish there were print copies available at reasonable prices so I could buy one to keep in my personal library, another to put in the public library where I work, and a couple more for gifts.
Read
February 4, 2014Obtained this rare book from a Canadian bookseller. No one in the states seems to have it. A glimpse into the sisters of his Flavia de Luce series obviously based on his own sisters and the effect of a lost parent on family life mimics his own situation. In many ways this must have been cathartic for the author and his humor gives a glimpse of how he came to terms with early loss. A tribute to his strong mother and to his credit one of his early writings that acknowledged his debt to an upbringing that fostered his creativity and produced subsequent writings of exceptional quality.
January 8, 2015
Touching, Moving & Inspirational! A Beautiful Read!
June 8, 2023
An unusual memoir. Bradley's mother copied down Bible verses on to scraps of paper - the backs of envelopes or ads or pieces torn off of something else - and put them in a shoebox. He discovers the box as a boy and pieces together what was going on in her life and his as she was writing. For example, when her husband / his father leaves for WW2, the verses are longing ones from Song of Songs. When her husband chooses an alternative life, the verses shift to ones about God's strength and faithfulness.
There's a lot left out. This was an artifact that Bradley didn't ever talk about with his mother until her deathbed, when she entrusted its safekeeping to him, so some of his piecing together is speculation. And it obviously has a lot of emotional weight for him, but not as much for me as a reader.
There's a lot left out. This was an artifact that Bradley didn't ever talk about with his mother until her deathbed, when she entrusted its safekeeping to him, so some of his piecing together is speculation. And it obviously has a lot of emotional weight for him, but not as much for me as a reader.
November 6, 2016
Love, loyalty, faith, selflessness - these themes are common in literature, of course, and they are tenderly handled in this book. Being a fan of the Flavia deLuce novels, I was interested to read this book. My overall rating is 3 stars, but I would give it 5 for inspiration - even to the point that I now consider hand-writing passages of scripture on mementos of my life, too. But it is not exactly what I was expecting, somehow, and I am a bit disappointed. Maybe that is the nature of real life - it is not exactly what we expect and it is sometimes disappointing. Nevertheless, this book (and, happily, my life) has real joy in it, too.
November 18, 2017
Just started this little-known gem from the author of the Flavia deLuce series. It’s also the last book from my 2014 TBR. Maybe, between all the other books I want to read, I’ll be able to clear up my 2015 TBR in 2018. If I ever made New Year Resolutions, this would be a good one. But I don’t (make resolutions, that is). Anyway, I hope the book is good.
After:
Well, that was underwhelming. What I thought was a short novel was actually a memoir. I thought it was “OK“. Maybe it would have been better if I had known what it was going into it. My fault. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it I just don’t think I would ever recommend it to anybody.
After:
Well, that was underwhelming. What I thought was a short novel was actually a memoir. I thought it was “OK“. Maybe it would have been better if I had known what it was going into it. My fault. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it I just don’t think I would ever recommend it to anybody.
July 1, 2021
A touching recollection of childhood illness, smart older sisters, a grieving yet incessantly hopeful mother and an absent father. I particularly enjoyed reading the author's description of the day his father left. His father has been summed up as many things, but a travelling transmitter salesman seems to have done so perfectly - ‘He was a genius….but he was born with walking boots.’ Although the son questions 'What remains of my mother’s years of grief, her years of sorrow? What was the use of her lifetime of patient waiting, of her boundless and never-ending faith?', she remained hopeful of her husband's return until her death.
May 10, 2018
I wanted to read this book because it is the memoir of one of my favorite authors. He is telling us his story, but it is, in many ways, more his mother's story. When he was a child he found a shoe box under the floor boards of his mother's room. The box was full of scraps of paper with scriptures written on them, in his mother's hand. He never asked about the box, but when his mom died many years later, the box came into his life again. These facts are the foundation of the story he tells about his life, and his mother's life. I found it very interesting, and a little sad.
April 3, 2016
At first it was hard to get into the book and see where it was going but it is well worth seeing it to the end. It is the story of life's journey through heartbreak and when life doesn't end up picture perfect or what we picture it should be and how to still have hope through it all. It is a story of reconciliation.
A brief review by Penguin Books:
"On a cold, dark winter day during the Second World War, a young Alan Bradley found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother’s bedroom closet a well-worn cardboard shoebox.
At the time, he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes—any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old-fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture.
He only knew that the box, which he would later come to think of as the Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home.
Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth.
Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father.
Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna. "
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of many short stories, children’s stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Winn Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, and Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, as well as the ebook short story, “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.”
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
..."echoed, and she squeezed me to her so tightly that ears sprang to my eyes, and then to hers. When I was older, I would learn that occasions accompanied by pain are often fixed fast in the memory like snapshots, but at the time, I was barely two years old, and my father had just run away from home."
"Some children are born seeking God outside themselves, and it is a lifelong quest, but one that can never be fulfilled, so that they are often left, in the end, sitting among the remnants of the things they have accumulated, and love is not one of them.
Yet other children - born in awe of the roaring torrents of their own arteries, the wide deserts of their skins, the uncharted forests of their silken hair, and the craggy mountains of their own knees, knuckles, and toes - sense instinctively from birth that the Creator is within, that in the hidden depths of movement lies the secret existence. No such child, watching wonder a ladybug trudging across a sun warmed forearm would ever question the presence of a higher and unseen authority: one who knows all the answers.
Born blessed, these happy souls never, ever - not for the fractional part of a second - tire of the spectacle of thoughts and inspirations that dance and play across their minds like lightning in a summer sky, or of ideas they glimpse, like the sudden flashing of silvery fins, just beneath the surface of their own debts. They are certain that God id not only "out there" but also "in here."
"Often as we grow older, we forget how keen our senses used to be."
"It was Leonardo da Vinci who observed that the color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of what illuminated it. So it is in the painter's world and so it is in the world of children. We are tinted by the rooms in which we have lived and learned when we were young, tinted by the shades of those who were there before us and, I know believe, by those who will sing in them after we are gone. And our own hymns of childhood will still be echoing in their ears long after we have once again become part of the lead and the paint and the glass and the light."
His description of the old woman:
"Her face is like nylon stocking stretched tightly over a carved wooden skull. Her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks are black caves, and her shriveled hands are like the talons of an eagle.
This is the witch who gave Snow White the apple, but something has gone dreadfully wrong with her."
"...like shaking hands with one of those yellow scaly legs lopped from a Co-op chicken."
when his mother told him they were never poor:
"We were awash in opportunities."
"She's right, I think: you're never poor until you give up , and she has never given up."
He gave a short brief history of the coming forth of Bible to the common man through Tynsdale, Wycliff.
His analogy of the pencil eraser...
"We are, each of us, a story told by God: a story of great sadness and great joy, but one that ends always in glory."
A brief review by Penguin Books:
"On a cold, dark winter day during the Second World War, a young Alan Bradley found hidden beneath a floorboard in his mother’s bedroom closet a well-worn cardboard shoebox.
At the time, he could make little sense of the ragtag things he found inside: cigarette packages, soup can labels, handbills, calendars, paper bags, pie boxes—any scrap of paper upon which his mother could copy out, in her old-fashioned handwriting, what seemed to be no more than unrelated snippets of Scripture.
He only knew that the box, which he would later come to think of as the Shoebox Bible, had something to do with the fact that his father had run away from home.
Many years would pass, and his mother would be on her deathbed before he would once again hold this treasure in his hands. And only then would he put together the pieces of the puzzle, and learn the complete truth.
Beautifully and lovingly told, The Shoebox Bible is a wonderful memoir of a precocious family who manage to live and love despite the absence of their father.
Interspersed with heartbreaking quotations from the Old and New Testaments, this sad, funny, and above all inspiring story will appeal to readers who fell in love with such inspirational books as Tuesdays with Morrie and Mister God, This Is Anna. "
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Bradley is the New York Times bestselling author of many short stories, children’s stories, newspaper columns, and the memoir The Shoebox Bible. His first Flavia de Luce novel, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, received the Crime Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award, the Dilys Winn Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, the Agatha Award, the Macavity Award, and the Barry Award, and was nominated for the Anthony Award. His other Flavia de Luce novels are The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag, A Red Herring Without Mustard, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Speaking from Among the Bones, The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches, As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust, and Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d, as well as the ebook short story, “The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse.”
Some of my favorite quotes from the book:
..."echoed, and she squeezed me to her so tightly that ears sprang to my eyes, and then to hers. When I was older, I would learn that occasions accompanied by pain are often fixed fast in the memory like snapshots, but at the time, I was barely two years old, and my father had just run away from home."
"Some children are born seeking God outside themselves, and it is a lifelong quest, but one that can never be fulfilled, so that they are often left, in the end, sitting among the remnants of the things they have accumulated, and love is not one of them.
Yet other children - born in awe of the roaring torrents of their own arteries, the wide deserts of their skins, the uncharted forests of their silken hair, and the craggy mountains of their own knees, knuckles, and toes - sense instinctively from birth that the Creator is within, that in the hidden depths of movement lies the secret existence. No such child, watching wonder a ladybug trudging across a sun warmed forearm would ever question the presence of a higher and unseen authority: one who knows all the answers.
Born blessed, these happy souls never, ever - not for the fractional part of a second - tire of the spectacle of thoughts and inspirations that dance and play across their minds like lightning in a summer sky, or of ideas they glimpse, like the sudden flashing of silvery fins, just beneath the surface of their own debts. They are certain that God id not only "out there" but also "in here."
"Often as we grow older, we forget how keen our senses used to be."
"It was Leonardo da Vinci who observed that the color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of what illuminated it. So it is in the painter's world and so it is in the world of children. We are tinted by the rooms in which we have lived and learned when we were young, tinted by the shades of those who were there before us and, I know believe, by those who will sing in them after we are gone. And our own hymns of childhood will still be echoing in their ears long after we have once again become part of the lead and the paint and the glass and the light."
His description of the old woman:
"Her face is like nylon stocking stretched tightly over a carved wooden skull. Her hollow eyes and sunken cheeks are black caves, and her shriveled hands are like the talons of an eagle.
This is the witch who gave Snow White the apple, but something has gone dreadfully wrong with her."
"...like shaking hands with one of those yellow scaly legs lopped from a Co-op chicken."
when his mother told him they were never poor:
"We were awash in opportunities."
"She's right, I think: you're never poor until you give up , and she has never given up."
He gave a short brief history of the coming forth of Bible to the common man through Tynsdale, Wycliff.
His analogy of the pencil eraser...
"We are, each of us, a story told by God: a story of great sadness and great joy, but one that ends always in glory."
February 27, 2019
As tho I read of my mother's death. Tho my father never physically left her, he sureky did in spirit...cried my heart out tho not enough...such grief I have not felt in years...how this man can so clearly paint the loss I have felt and yet the wonder and magic I was yet able to construct...I cannot help to believe it would have been a better world had my mother lived and my father departed. I have no shoebox.
August 13, 2020
This book is incredibly hard to rate. On the one hand, it is heart-wrenchingly tender, But then it had parts that seemed like rabbit-holes. Relevance of many of the anecdotes were not clear until much later in the story. This book felt like a peek into a soft, hardship memory of the author's youth. There are religious aspects and WWII references. I am glad that I read this novel, But I am reluctant to recommend it.
March 29, 2018
This is a lovely memoir by the author of the Flavia de Luce series (and other books). He writes of his early childhood which included his mother and sisters. The sisters remind me of Flavia's sisters and I believe they be an inspiration for the fictional de Luce sisters. Bradley recounts the finding of the shoebox where his mother stored her writings and how it impacted his life.
August 26, 2018
What a beautiful, heart-filling story! When I got to the end I found tears were pouring down my face. I lost my mother last year - and it feels like this book came into my life at the exactly right time for me. I found comfort and healing in its pages. Books help us realize we're not alone, don't they? Thank you, Alan Bradley, for sharing this story with us.
January 2, 2020
I love the Flavia De Luce series. (I've probably spelled that badly) This is a book about Bradley who is the author.
His mother kept a box of writing which is what got her through a terrible time of life. Not unlike a journal, she copied scripture or poetry and saved it in a shoe box.
Bradley became the keeper of the box and through it came to better understand his own life.
His mother kept a box of writing which is what got her through a terrible time of life. Not unlike a journal, she copied scripture or poetry and saved it in a shoe box.
Bradley became the keeper of the box and through it came to better understand his own life.
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