Beyond the Dead End: Letters to My Father

Beyond the Dead End is Mary Ylvisaker Nilsen s story, but it is the story of every woman finding her voice during those mid-20th Century years of transition in our country, transitions in culture and Christianity, in expectations and opportunities, in beliefs and behavior. From the Small Generation (a link between the Greatest Generation, which came before, and the Boomer Generation that followed) comes a voice that transcends generational stereotypes and explores universal human longing. With heartfelt honesty, in letters to her beloved father who died when she was six, Nilsen narrates a life lived in the space between intention and execution, between assumption and reality, between the quotidian and the ideal, between obsession and love. This spiritual memoir, which spans the century, invites readers into the perspective of a woman with rarity of vision, a thinker who tries to see beyond the horizon. Told in moving detail, her stories describe many dead ends of her life s calling to ministry and her pride in parenting, of her idealism about marriage and her hopes for social reform, of her longing for passion and her need for security. And yet, these dead ends are never final. Through experience and insight, Nilsen always takes us beyond a dead end to the space the dead end reveals, and to the hope, ironically, that it makes possible.