Driving by Moonlight: A Journey Through Love, War, and Infertility

The first time I read something written by Kristin was in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine almost a year ago. I was drawn in by the subject matter and stayed because I really liked how and what she wrote. Since then I've become a huge fan, even going so far as to send my father-in-law to one of her readings for an autographed copy of this book. I knew a bit about Kristen's personal history from her article in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine about her chaplain husband (available on her website at www.kristinhenderson.com) and this book tells us even more. I loved this book! Kristin takes (what I think are) enormous risks - opening up and telling the world about her relationships with her family, her struggles with infertility, Rosie and the Vette. Do yourself a favor and get then read this book! And get a copy for someone you love.

I sat down and read this book cover to cover. Though I have not had to go through a battle with infertility, this book was deeply meaningful to me. So many questions that I deal with daily as a wife, mother, and human being. Where does God fit into my life? What is this uncontrolable urge to have (or not to have!) children? Did I want them for the right reasons--and now that I have them, do I really want them? How does it make sense on a cosmic level for someone who wants a child more than anything and cannot have one while there are so many people who frankly should not have them have kids with ease? I really appreciated the author's honesty---she said so many things that few people would have the guts too, especially about marriage. Very thought provoking, comforting and unsettling at the same time. Well worth a read for anyone!

After September 11, 2001, Kristin Henderson's husband, a Lutheran minister and Marine chaplain, shipped out to Afghanistan. And Kristin, a pacifist Quaker, climbed into her Corvette with her German shepherd and embarked on a 10,000-mile journey through a country that seemed forever changed. This memoir details that cross-country journey; more importantly, it explores the author's simultaneous journey of self-discovery.Henderson deftly weaves together the strands of her road trip with those of her internal one. As she drives the highways and backroads of America and Canada, she sees signs everywhere of people's grief, shock, and anger over the terrorist attacks, and she reflects on her Quaker beliefs, questioning whether those beliefs can be reconciled with her thirst for vengeance. As she fears for her husband's safety and breathlessly awaits his too-infrequent e-mails, she recalls the strain placed on her marriage by the conflicts between her own religious questing and his rock-solid faith.Most memorably, she traces the couple's years-long struggle with infertility and the painful, heart-wrenching process of trying to get pregnant.This is Henderson's first published book, but you'd never know it from the eloquence of her writing and the complexity of emotion it conveys. She's often hilariously funny -- as when she compares religions to cars; or when she describes the renovation of her Washington, D.C., rowhouse's only bathroom; or when she tells of the eccentric characters encountered at a mountaintop lodge in Montana. But she can also bring a reader to tears with her discussion of a foreign-born teen who is assaulted for looking different; and, of course, her descriptions of infertility treatments and the psychological trauma that accompanies them.The author envies her dog Rosie's ability to live in the moment and accept whatever turns up next along the road. As a reader, I found myself envying Rosie as well, but for a different reason: I wished I could have been along on that journey, with so likeable and interesting a tour guide as Henderson at the wheel. Reading her book is the next best thing.

I live three miles from the Pentagon, less than an hour's walk on a sunny fall afternoon. Sixties liberal that I am though, I saw it only as a destination for peace marches. But when I woke up the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, with smoke still seeping through my open windows from the terrorist attack the day before, my perceptions had undergone a sea change. "The military is there to protect us," it dawned on me, "and someone's just blown a hole in that protection." With my former convictions in disarray, it's no wonder I was drawn to this memoir in which the author suffered a similar shock to her pacifist beliefs. "Does being a pacifist mean...it's wrong even to defend yourself?" she asks. "On TV, I saw that huge plane magically pushing its way into and through a New York skyscraper, metamorphosing along the way into a blooming poppy of fire. I watched tiny, fragile human figures standing at those broken windows a hundred floors up, someone's daughter, someone's son, all peering down and hoping against hope, not knowing there was no hope. Every time I see them, recall them, I want to seize something, anything, on the other side of the world and smash the hell out of it. I know I won't be satisfied until I see whole towns on the other side of the world destroyed. I horrify myself. I want to run away from myself."Henderson does "run away." Once she has hugged her Marine chaplain husband goodby, as he ships out for Afghanistan days after September 11, she sets off to drive across the country in a '78 Corvette with only her German shepherd to keep her company. But though she leaves the scenes of carnage behind, she can't escape from her churning emotions, her fear for her husband, or the contradictions that beset her mind. The conflict between her normal pacifism and her instinctual desire for vengeance is not the only discord in Henderson's life: She's a Quaker pacifist married to a Lutheran pastor and Marine chaplain. She parts ways with her husband as well on the subject of religious beliefs -- her growing rejection of the belief that Jesus was God incarnate. Most poignantly, her desire to have a baby increases with every tick of her biological clock, while her husband -- afraid he would follow in his father's footsteps and be an inadequate parent -- doesn't want children at all.While Driving by Moonlight is a "road" book, it is much more than that. The story of Henderson's trip is vivid, funny and at times harrowing (as she nearly becomes trapped in a sudden blizzard). The family, friends and strangers she encounters along her way are memorable characters, well portrayed in her hands. But her story is not just that of her journey from one coast to another, but of her journey through life. Fortunately for the reader, the author not only weaves her trip and her life complications together adroitly, but she seems utterly lacking in pretensions and leavens her serious themes with delicious humor. I couldn't stop laughing when she told how she and her d

This beautifully written, funny, wrenching and ultimately heartening memoir of a road trip in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is a rare find. Author Kristin Henderson certainly succeeds in bringing back that time of fear and confusion but what got me was her exploration of connections between the human urges to war and procreation. At the time her husband shipped out to Afghanistan, Henderson was struggling to come to terms with infertility--losing her dream of being a mother and the physical presence of her husband at the same time. Her road trip allowed her the time and solitude to sort through the pain and emotional confusion of all this while, as she says, giving her the illusion of forward motion. We are the lucky beneficiaries of this 'escape plan' as Henderson alternates her experiences on the road--often hooty, always interesting--with recollections of divisions in her self and her marriage over religion, and of the medical and emotional trials of fertility treatment. Reading this wonderful book, I sensed that Henderson, with her trusty dog Rosie at her side, would find the peace she was looking for and I was happy to be along for the vicarious ride.