Review
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Title: Miracles Among the Rubble
Author: Carol R. Gray
Publisher: Kofford Books
Genre: Non-Fiction, History, Inspirational
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 134
Binding: Cloth; Paperback; Digital
ISBN13: Cloth, 978-1-58958-650-5; Paperback978-1-58958-578-2; Digital
Price: Cloth, 27.95; Paperback, 17.95; Digital, 17.95
Reviewed by Heather Harris-Bergevin for the Association for Mormon Letters
I often tease that I’m a hard-hearted old crone. I don’t cry at commercials. I hate reading glurge-filled pass along stories that are meant to prey upon your emotions. For me, it’s like the difference between small talk between strangers, and a deep discussion between close friends. I long for real-ness.
This book made me cry.
Not just once. Several times.
…in the first forty pages.
But, not sappy regretful tears over foolish words. If you like adorable inspirationish bits about cutesy things, this actually is not the book for you at all. If, however, you want to see how one human yearned to help others, and by taking small steps, made an amazing and powerful change, this is your next read.
Carol R. Gray was a cancer survivor, bereavement counselor, mom of seven small humans, and Relief Society President in her British ward in the early 1990s when she saw ongoing news footage of the war in the Balkans and the suffering of the people there. She saw the suffering of the Croatian and Serbian people as the country became more and more authoritarian and fundamentalist as a religious nation.
She realized, “I want to do something.”
So, she began.
She was thirty-five, and already exceptionally busy, not the least with her family and callings. She began organizing, and gathering supplies, first in her ward, then region, then nationally. Just before delivery to the cargo company they had intended to use, it went bankrupt.
Now, I’ve been in wards that did service projects the easiest way possible, or just wrote little testimonies in Book of Mormons and called it a day, like we were Activity Day kids. Not Carol. In her daughter’s words, “She simply said, ‘Right, if there is nobody who is willing or able to take it, then we will do it.”
And, she did. She bought a truck. Twenty cargo convoys, one after the other, provided goods, services, medical equipment, and much-needed care to those cut off by the front lines of the war. By her death in 2010, her total was over forty convoys, personally delivered to the front lines. Eventually, she would also build a school for students in Ghana who had been orphaned by the AIDs crisis.
Oh, and she was made a special advisor to the United Nations. You know, no big deal, just average stuff for your average British housewife and mom of many.
This book is written in a series of short personal essays, with just enough detail to be both beautiful and touching, without glorifying any of the danger or sorrows they faced. Even more happily, and despite the lovely (but to me slightly off-putting) rendering of Carol on the cover, the book is missing “white savioring.” Carol’s focus was on helping People, not on HER helping people. This book is about her journey and what was done, but she firmly did not center it upon herself. It’s not her story she’s telling, though she is part of it. It’s the story of the struggles to get there, and the repeated ways she found that God made a way for their journey in the convoys. She emphasizes that all she personally had to offer was hugs and love. The rest were donations from others. She was just the messenger, not the message. Even the most poignant of her stories, and those intended to encourage faith, are sincere and from experience, so they do not come off as maudlin.
Who will like this book? First of all, my Aunt Pat, who is devoutly LDS, and my mum, who loves biography. But, also my non-LDS or non-practicing friends will also find this story both inspirational and heart-healing. I plan on using some of the essays as stories for FHE, and they would also be great additions to reading for middle school and high school students. Anyone who loves tenacious humans and adventure will enjoy these beautiful personal essays.
Because, despite my cynic’s reticence to hero stories, this is not a hero story. It is a human story. The message Carol emphasizes is that the way she became a special ambassador to the UN was not because she, herself, was special. It was because she showed up. And kept doing so, time after time.
It was not because she did a lot of big things. It was because she took a lot of tiny steps, which cumulatively grew into an amazing experience where she was capable of helping a great deal of humans. We all would do well to have a Carol in our lives, pushing us forward to that next small step.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.