Physically, emotionally - the scars ran deep. Plain and simple, Nick was an abusive husband. Why in the world would Rhoda stay with a man this violent, this harsh and mean-spirited? Like many, I wanted to shake Rhoda for being weak. But her memoir doesn’t focus so much on her dissolution as it does the way she cobbles together the pieces of her broken heart into a new, stronger one.Īs Janzen relives her marriage to Nick, a charismatic but unpredictable academic, we begin to feel her pain - and then we get angry. When her husband of many decades announces he’s leaving her for a man he met online, she crumbles. And Janzen herself is a heroine we can all root for - a brilliant but damaged Everywoman. Janzen’s mother, Mary, totally steals the show her snappy one-liners and innocent-yet-savvy expressions were hilarious. I read this book quickly, laughing at points until tears streamed down my face. The synopsis above probably did nothing to sell you on how truly funny this book is. There were many times Mennonite In A Little Black Dress could have dissolved into a maudlin reflection of her tumultuous marriage and emotional and physical injuries, but it never does. Returning home to her traditional roots, Janzen laces anecdotes from her unique upbringing with the more complicated nature of her present.
Long distanced from her conservative Mennonite family in California but still close to her sympathetic but stoic parents, Janzen boards a plane to abandon the lake house she once shared with her volatile husband and recuperate far from her old life. Broken from the sequence of an ugly divorce and a devastating car accident, Rhoda Janzen finds herself facing a harsh new reality in her forties.
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