Meghan K. Barnes autobiographic account of her youth in the casino dominated environment of Atlantic City New Jersey is more interesting than one might expect.
Take a young girl living with her family in Atlantic City. Add in encounters and relationships with her peers her family members and the culture generally and what you have is For The Love of God memoir of growing up in difficult times facing adversity temptation injustice potential poverty and a variety of other challenges and you might not expect much of a book. Yet Meghan Barnes has created a fascinating read out of what might otherwise appear to be ordinary events not worthy of recounting or things best ignored or forgotten.
Memoirs are often a reflection of what matters in the authors life; rites of passage important memories relationships importance and events that shaped future events or consequences. Yet this isnt exactly what we get upon opening For The Love of God. In fact the vignettes the author shares with us we might expect to be unimportant until we see how she illustrates them and come to learn exactly why they actually were important or the origin of memories that persist.
This is not A Tree Grows In Atlantic City. It is not a story of a happy youth sprinkled with anecdotes about how life turns out well if you are patient and persevere. It is more of a struggle with adversity and circumstances and situations that should not have occurred or which turned out differently than one might expect. That good intentions and hard work dont always result in the best endings but at the same time we realize that such endings arent the end of the world. They are part of life and are there to be learned from. Perhaps it is the learning and the facing adversity that is the most important.
What fascinated this reviewer the most was how easily the book became a page-turner despite my expectations that it wouldnt. Thus we see how her fathers job search a vacation trip to the Caribbean or building structures out of pasta for a school science class impacted the authors life; a life that culminates for our purposes in her relationship with her Godmother the Godmothers fight against cancer and the authors eventual escape from Atlantic City which was the Godmothers dream for her.
The stories are intensely personal portrayed with superb use of language and the final chapter which deals in part with the authors religious growth and identification is of particular interest. In a time where religious faith is receding in popular interest it leads one to wonder exactly how some of the seemingly coincidental events occurred. A picture emerges that faith which doesnt play a central role in the story is more important than it seems and leads one to explore the role of faith in adversity. All in all the book is filled with important lessons from life that we can look back on or use as instruction for those who havent encountered them yet.
All things considered Meghan Barnes has constructed a work of value which probably will not receive the recognition that it deserves because it lies outside the plane of popular subject matter; a fact that makes it much more valuable reading.
Ms. Barnes who holds an MFA in Creative Writing is widely published in a variety of forums. For the Love of God is available from Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle editions.