Theology: G. K. Chesterton and the Everlasting People by Matthew J. Milliner.

If you think a book combining the irascible English apologist with First Nations mythology and culture is the unlikeliest thing you’ve ever heard of, well, yes, it is. And yet, it works. Milliner takes Chesterton’s deep conviction that all the nations of the earth find their fulfillment in Christ—which the apologist explored at some length with European cultures—and extends it to “Turtle Island,” a traditional moniker for North America. Milliner does this in three steps. First, he attends to the deep and long history of Native American Christianity, a fact passed over in silence both by cultured despisers of missions and New Age-y appropriations of Native spirituality. Second, he explores how descendents of European settlers in North America (like himself) can invest in what has become their own native land, its history, and its first peoples in an authentic, respectful, and faithful way. And third, building on his earlier work on Byzantine icons of Mary, Milliner puts the suffering love of the Virgin in dialogue with both old-timers and newcomers to America. The result is fruitful at every turn. If you end up moved and intrigued, the footnotes offer a vast number of trails to follow. You might also have a look at the First Nations Version translation of the Bible into an English that will surprise and illuminate you no matter what your ethnic background.

Cookbook: The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen by Sean Sherman.

This is the most delicious cookbook I have that I mostly can’t cook out of, because I’m living in Japan, not North America. Chef Sherman’s purpose is to present recipes that depend entirely on plants and animals native to his home continent—ingredients familiar to all Americans but cooked here in new and unusual configurations: corn, squash, beans, wild rice, sunflower seeds, maple syrup, cranberries, venison, trout, goose, duck, and turkey. Then he goes you one further and introduces American ingredients from farther afield: amaranth, acorn, yucca, grouse, pheasant, bison, and all kinds of foraged greens such as cedar, sage, sorrel, juniper, tamarack, lamb’s quarters, and sumac. There are lots of lists and tips for sourcing and understanding the ingredients and instructions for making your own pantry staples, plus restaurant-level dishes from other indigenous chefs. Once I’m back on my own home continent I will most certainly return to exploring these recipes.

Novel: The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton.

G. K. Chesterton is and remains a legend among Christian authors. I’m not sure how much he is actually read anymore, though. I myself have only dabbled, maybe because I was already so immersed in expansive orthodoxy that I didn’t need Chesterton to help me discover it. I have also wondered at times if it’s possible to love both Luther and Chesterton. I don’t think they’re at odds with each other ultimately, but they’re fighting very different battles. As scholarship in the last century has taken pains to remind us, Luther was much more like the last medieval man than the first modern man. Chesterton, for his part, was a man raging against modernity, or at least its ugliest manifestations. If your primary battles happen to be against the nihilism, rationalism, imperialism, and self-absorbed conceit of modernity, then there’s no better place to start than with The Man Who Was Thursday, a novel that is all but impossible to categorize or characterize because it is everything, rather like the character Sunday within it. The story is strange, offensive, predictable, and shocking all at once. I was fairly outraged the first time I read it. Since then, I’ve come around—not least of all because I found Luther making, in his own way, a similar theological argument to Chesterton’s fictional argument, with his notion of “the game God plays with his saints.”

Speaking of theological fiction… I’ve started a new podcast, combining my thoughts and explorations of fiction in a Christian key with my own fiction. Season 1 covers the thirty short stories in Pearly Gates: Parables from the Final Threshold, and about half of them are already out and ready for you to listen. Just search for Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories in your podcast app or visit sarahhinlickywilsonstories. podbean.com!

This is the podcast logo… for an explanation, listen to episode 6!