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Virginia Stem Owens
Biography
Virginia Stem Owens has written more than seventeen books, including four novels and nonfiction on a wide range of topics from media to metaphysics. She has been on the editorial board of Books & Culture since its inception. She also served for seven years as director of the
Bibliography
- Caring for Moter: A Daughter’s Long Goodbye. WestminsterJohnKnox, 2007.**Named one of Top 150 Best Books of 2007 by Publishers Weekly!**
- Living Next Door to the Death House. Eerdmans, Eerdmans, 2003
- Looking for Jesus. WestminsterJohnKnox, 1998.
- Daughters of Eve: Women of the Bible Speak to Women of Today. Navpress, 1995.
- A Multitude of Sins. Baker Books, 1993.
- Congregation. Baker Books, 1992.
- At Point Blank. Baker Books, 1992.
- If You Do Love Old Men. Eerdmans, 1990.
- And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics. Eerdmans, 1983. Wipf & Stock, 2006. Reprinted as God Spy: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics, Alta Vista College Press, 1988
- Feast of Families. Zondervan, 1984. Paperback edition, Macmillan, 1988.
- Wind River Winter. Zondervan, 1987.
- The Total Image. Eerdmans, 1980.
- A Taste of Creation. Judson Press, 1980.
- Assault on Eden. Eerdmans, 1977. (Published pseudonymously under Eugenia Adams.)
- The Short Story. Extramural Independent Study Center, Kansas University, 1972
Blog Archive
Contributors
Publisher's Weekly Review of "Caring for Mother"
Caring for Mother: A Daughter's Long Goodbye
Virginia Stem Owens. Westminster John Knox, $16.95 paper (176p)
ISBN 978-0-664-23152-1
Death is never timely: it comes either too soon or too late. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion recounts the aftermath of her husband's sudden death at the dinner table. At the other edge of the spectrum, Owens describes seven years preceding her mother's relentless descent into dementia, "God's own breath slowly leaking out through the fissures in her brain." Afflicted first with Parkinson's, then small strokes and Alzheimer's disease, Mrs. Stem eventually required round-the-clock care. Owens moved next door and spent hours every day with her: "All I could do was squat beside the avalanche, listening for any sign of life; sometimes I could hear a faint but familiar echo of her voice or gesture from under the heap." Through essays as incisive and insightful as Didion's, this account succeeds on multiple levels: medical detective story, personal memoir, flawless description, philosophical and spiritual exploration (where is the self when the brain no longer functions normally?). Owens offers not self-help but hope as she bears witness to the grief and glory of life's ending: "If love... weren't the center from which life flows, if it didn't, as Dante says, move the stars, how could we bear such weight?" (June)
An Original RBL Review
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