Another Hour On A Sunday Morning - Hardcover

Scheeres, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 009179711X ISBN 13: 9780091797119

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2006

Synopsis

Betrayed by her parents, taken away from everything she knows - this is the unforgettable true story of a brutal childhood of institutionalized abuse. One of the most compelling, page-turning memoirs to come along in years - by turns jarring, shocking, and funny. "Another Hour on a Sunday Morning" is the story of two children growing up in fundamentalist Christian America. Sinners go to: Hell. Rightchuss go to: Heaven. The end is neer: Repent. This here is: Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother, David. It's the mid-1980s, they're sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks - and a racism neither of them is prepared for. While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother (more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children) and a violent father only compound their problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, the parents send Julia and David to the Dominican Republic to a 1980s Christian version of Brat Camp. In this riveting memoir, first-time author, Scheeres takes us with her from the Midwest to a place beyond our imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins under boot-camp conditions. Julia and David's determination to make it through their childhood and the camp with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor and sparkling humour. Mesmerising and unputdownable - like "Running with Scissors" by Augusten Burroughs or "Once In A House On Fire" by Andrea Ashworth, "Another Hour on a Sunday Morning" is unforgettable.

About this title

About the Author

Julia Scheeres has a B.A. in Spanish and an M.A. in Journalism from the University of Southern California. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, El Financiero, and Wired, and has twice been a finalist for journalism awards presented by the USC Annenberg School for Communication. She lives in Oakland, California.

From the Back Cover

One of the most compelling, page-turning memoirs to come along in years - by turns jarring, shocking, and funny. Another Hour On A Sunday Morning is the story of two children growing up in fundamentalist Christian America.
Sinners go to: HELL. Rightchuss go to: HEAVEN. The end is neer: REPENT. This here is: JESUS LAND.

Julia Scheeres stumbles across these signs along the side of a cornfield while out biking with her adopted brother, David. It's the mid-1980s, they're sixteen years old and have just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees and trailer parks - and a racism neither of them is prepared for.

While Julia is white, her close relationship with David, who is black, makes them both outcasts. At home, a distant mother (more involved with her church's missionaries than with her own children) and a violent father only compound their problems. When the day comes that high-school hormones, bullying, and a deep-seated restlessness prove too much to bear, the parents send Julia and David to the Dominican Republic to a 1980s Christian version of Brat Camp.

In this riveting memoir, first-time author Scheeres takes us with her from the Midwest to a place beyond our imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, the camp is governed by a disciplinary regime that demands its teens repent for their sins under boot-camp conditions.

Julia and David's determination to make it through their childhood and the camp with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor and sparkling humour.

Praise for Another Hour On A Sunday Morning

'Julia Scheeres' beautifully-written memoir took my breath away - for the cruelties she suffered, for the courage it took to survive and tell her story, and for her enduring, sparkling faith. She is able to describe the everyday details of her experience with a clear, candid eye, and without bitterness - making her story vividly alive, at turns heart-breaking and humorous.' Laura Fraser, author of An Italian Affair

'The grace and emotional brawn that carried Julia Scheeres through the pummeling brutality of her youth has enabled her to tell the tale with a measured intensity that pulls you to her side and keeps you there. I could not stop reading this book.' Mary Roach,author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

From the Inside Flap

Growing up in the 1970s in rural Indiana, Julia Scheeres is the youngest daughter of fundamentalist Christian parents who decide their duty to God is to adopt two black boys. Julia and David the younger boy become fast friends. Their parents are emotionally constipated fundamentalists whose idea of being a good parent is to make sure Rejoice Radio (a contemporary Christian music station) is piped through an intercom system to every room in the house.

As the only black people for miles around, the two boys are abused at every turn. One day, David s depression and angst means that it all comes to a head. In the meantime, Julia has been swigging Southern Comfort before getting the school bus as a way of coping. Both end up in a Christian boot camp in the Dominican Republic. And life gets very hard indeed.

Like Andrea Ashworth s Once In A House On Fire or Augusten Burroughs Running With Scissors, this is not only a compelling story of the survival of a very peculiar childhood, but also the story of the love a brother and sister have for each other and how they hold on to that through everything.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 009179711X
• ISBN 13: 9780091797119
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368