Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen

This is yet another book I picked up because the author was going to be speaking at a nearby college (my alma mater as a matter of fact).  Unfortunately, as so often happens, life got in the way and I was unable to attend the speaking engagement.  Which is regrettable as she has an interesting story and I believe I would have enjoyed listening to her.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a memoir of the author's life after her husband leaves her and she returns to her Mennonite parents house and community for an extended stay.  Janzen begins her story at the point where her life appears to be falling apart.  Her and her husband had just bought a giant, expensive lake-side home.  She had a complication-riddled hysterectomy (which she good-naturedly refers to as "The Year of the Pee Bag").  She was in a traumatic and life threatening car accident.  And, the icing on the cake, her husband leaves her for a man he met on a gay dating website (whom she hilariously refers to as "Bob the Guy" throughout the book).  Janzen takes a leave of absence from her job as a college English professor and returns to her parents home in California for a little R&R where she heals and reconnects with her Mennonite roots.

First I would like to say Mennonite does not equal Amish.  Funny.  I always thought it did and I spent the majority of the book in a state of confusion while the author spoke of her fondness for high heels and makeup and her family's cars and TVs and radios and such.  But she clears up the confusion in an appendix at the end of the book.  Apparently, Mennonites and Amish are similar but not the same, with the Amish actually beginning as an off shoot of the Mennonites because the Mennonites were getting a little too worldly. 

I have to hand it to Janzen.  She really pulls it together after so many bad things happen to her all at once.  And she does it with humor and grace.  I truly related to her story as I have had a string of misfortunes over the last few years and all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and stay there for the rest of my life.  I STILL feel that way sometimes.  And I can honestly say, I definitely don't have her courage to write a book about it.  So kudos to her.

As I've mentioned, the book is quite funny.  Janzen has a wonderfully charming, self-deprecating sense of humor that draws you in and makes you laugh out loud.  At one point she's musing about which clothing choices God would prefer, "shorts or jeans".  You gotta consider these things if you plan to go to heaven!

Janzen is admittedly a grammarian and vocab hound, as any multi-degreed English professor is wont to be.  So, that being said, get out your dictionaries, book nerds.  I have a dictionary app on my Blackberry and I used it often while reading this book.  She's better than word-a-day calendars.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit.  It was a light-hearted and funny read and I would definitely recommend it.  And best of all, she provides a Mennonite recipe section at the end of the book including some of her family's best loved dishes.  Some really sound delicious and I would love to try them out soon.  For this, I am going to give Mennonite in a Little Black Dress four bows. Check it out.  It's a fun read.  And until next time, happy reading!