A mother-son road trip across the divide

Is it possible to have real, authentic relationships across political party lines? In his third book, Jedidiah Jenkins explores this question by taking readers on a road trip with his mother. Jenkins (a gay man and a former evangelical) and his mom, Barbara (a devout conservative Christian), drive from Louisiana to the Oregon coast, retracing the famous walk Barbara took with her former husband Peter (Jedidiah’s father) in the 1970s.

Mother, Nature offers readers only a bit of Jenkins’s coming-out story, which he tells more fully in his first memoir, To Shake the Sleeping Self. Because he wanted to be seen as a good Christian, Jenkins struggled for years with his sexuality, even attempting conversion therapy. Over many years, Jenkins came to accept himself, to believe that he was created in God’s image just as he is.

I listened to the audio version of Mother, Nature in my car as I navigated a dark and rainy Washington winter. Hearing Jenkins tell his story, I thought about the questions that so often run on a loop in my brain: How can I exist in this divided world while maintaining both my humanity and the humanity of those whose values differ greatly from mine? How can I be my authentic self in relationship with them? Is it even possible? Jenkins brilliantly articulates this tension throughout the book.