Review
Title: The Gathering Home: Creating a Refuge of Goodness and Joy
Author: Emily Freeman
Publisher: Deseret Book
Genre: Inspirational
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 272
Binding: Hardback
ISBN 13: 978-1629728223
Price: 29.99
Reviewed by Tracy Ward for the Association of Mormon Letters
Like most people during this pandemic, I’m vastly looking forward to resuming normal life. Life where I can open my home again to friends and neighbors. The Gathering Home: Creating a Refuge of Goodness and Joy, by Emily Freeman, has so many good ideas for how to create opportunities to gather as a family, with friends, and with neighbors. I wasn’t quite sure what this book would be about, so as I started reading, I found myself pleasantly surprised. I love how the first section, “The Sacred in the Everyday” is both inspirational to start your gathering and serves as a series of mini devotionals I can steal for FHE and church lessons.
The Gathering Home’s focus on making your home a refuge from the onslaught of the world speaks deeply to my heart. As a new mom, I’m trying to figure out the kind of home I want to create for my family, and this book highlights many of my desires and puts them into easily actionable terms. I appreciate that The Gathering Home doesn’t only focus on the large gatherings but also on the weekly and daily gatherings: how to prepare for the Sabbath, how to gather for family scripture study, etc. I like that there are bigger gathering ideas for each month of the year, especially for months that seem a little dry without an actual holiday. I would say I want to incorporate about half of the ideas suggested. Mainly I love how inspired I feel when reading this book.
There are a few things to note. This book is predominantly for families with children, particularly children who are at least old enough to hold a crayon. There aren’t many ideas for nursery age and younger. While you could adapt the ideas as a single person or empty nesters if you chose, the focus is on families with children at home. For the most part, I’ll be keeping this book on my shelf for when my kids get older. While I like the devotional style wording in the first section of the book, I found myself skipping over the month intros and photo captions since the flowery language gets to be a bit much if you read all the sections back to back. It probably wouldn’t bug me if I were reading each section during the relevant month as I’m planning: i.e., if I were reading the April section in late March or early April as I’m planning my family calendar. Overall, though, I’ve enjoyed The Gathering Home enough that I know several people whom I’d gift it to.