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Saxton Reads! & Reviews

We invite the public to post reviews to our catalog by logging into our online catalog. Reviews will then be posted to this blog. Comments can be added to existing posts or may be added as separate reviews on our catalog
MARCH 23, 2011
Same Kind of Different As Me ~ Ron Hall & Denver Moore

****CarolK

It’s happened enough that I should know better. When our book group decided to read Same Kind of Different As Me by Ron Hall & Denver Moore, I wasn’t positive I would like it. Needless to say, I did; I really liked it!
 
I’m not certain what I was expecting as the book was described as an unlikely friendship between a homeless man and wealthy art dealer. I just couldn’t get my head around the idea that there was something to say here.
 
Denver Moore, a black man brought up in 50’s Louisiana; shifted from place to place, suffering terrible losses at a young age, surviving by the hand of The Man, eventually ends up homeless on the streets of Fort Worth, Texas.
 
Ron Hall, also a child of those times, but with a whole different background, finds himself selling million dollar art work and married to a saint of a woman, Debbie. What seemingly should have been Debbie’s story to tell is handed to Ron and Denver after Debbie’s death.
 
When Ron and Debbie Hall are first married, they label themselves non-believers. Debbie convinces Ron to join her for a visit to the Union Gospel Mission. Here she finds a place and faith that fits, never looking back. On their first visit to the mission, Debbie tells Ron that she pictures the mission as a different place, “no vagrants, no trash, just a beautiful place where people can get to know god”. How does she know this? She had a dream. As she becomes a regular volunteer, Debbie shares another dream, one about a man, a wise man who changes the city. She saw him. She saw his face. When Denver visits the mission one day, Debbie knows this is the man in her dreams.
 
As you can tell from the above this is a faith based book. But it is far more than that. It is an exploration of friendship, race, prejudice to the homeless, black, and even the wealthy. It delves into death and dying and end of life issues that will get under your skin. It is a celebration of the life of a strong woman, the man who loved her and a man who would do anything to carry out her dream.

Denver is one fine story-teller and his voice is funny, sad and inspirational indeed.

Those of us brought up in the north can never truly appreciate the realities of the civil rights struggle, sharecropping, and what it meant to be a Negro in the south. We do have some clue about homelessness. The conversation went round and round and we came to no concrete conclusions. Still, I don’t think that any of us read Same Kind of Different As Me without a conscience look at these issues. Books; they take you places, some prettier than others, but it’s always worth the journey.
 
 

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