The Exact Place: A Memoir by Margie L. Haack
Deep in the woods of northwestern Minnesota where the
temperatures drop easily below freezing and the neighbors drop in at any time,
Margie L. Haack tells the story of her life growing up with five siblings, a
mother and a stepfather. The portrait
she weaves is both intimately personal and public, brimming with details of her
search for her stepfather’s love and the daily grind of life on a farm. Margie’s writing shines forth with an amazing
clarity on account of her willingness to bring the reader to experience what
she has experienced and to step back with a perceptive glance at the details of
her own life.
One of my absolute favorite parts of the book was Margie’s
description of her early love for reading. Although Margie wasn’t led early on in reading
by her family, her passion for books came to the surface very early on in
life. She describes it by writing, “Words
began to light up in spellbinding stories…..Books exploded into talking horses,
trolls living under bridges, and the poetic order of “twelve little girls in
two straight lines” who “left the house at half-past nine” (153). Starting from a lower reading level and
quickly moving up to the top, Margie devoured anything that came her way. This part of the book was akin to my own
experience with books, the sense that they opened up new worlds, new ideas, and
new thoughts that wouldn’t let go from your mind.
Early on the book,
Margie writes, “By the time I was nine, I had five brothers and sisters and Dad
had distilled laws for children into one basic rule: “Don’t do as I do, do as I
say.” In other words, obey me. ..I was
always vigilant trying to discern unspoken rules conveyed by a look or a sudden
movement of his hand” (12). The ever
winding road of obedience to an authority figure was cast for Margie at an
early age. Yet, there was a never ending
quest for seeking to please her dad, wanting that ‘Good girl’ encouragement,
that tender Fatherly care to come out of her relationship with her dad. The beauty of this memoir is that Margie in
passages like this one draws out the internal self-conversation that takes
place with an amazing sensitivity to her own heart and motives. In seeking to please Wally with her chores
and activities around the farm, Margie began to ask similar questions of
God. “God must, I thought, need to be
won by the same sort of hard work and allurement my human father apparently
required. And yet, what would God need
that I could give?” (180). Yet, as she
indicates, the memorizing of certain passages of Scripture lead her to a fuller
understanding of God as Father and his care for her.
Margie brought to life the experiences and details of life
on a farm, from the colors of the forest to the stupidity of the sheep. I couldn’t put this book down, it was much
like a character in a good novel that you can’t tear yourself away from. Rather than paint over the painful and
difficult moments of life, Margie takes the reader to those moments and brings
them face to face with their own world.
Much thanks to Kalos Press, an imprint of Doulos Resources
for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for review.
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