Land Of My Fathers

My father was 35 when I was born, so you could call him “old school” because he grew up in the depression era. He was very conservative and discerning when it came to making decisions. He endured a lot and those memories, altho long gone, stayed fresh in his mind and he governed himself accordingly. He only went as far as grade school before he had to go to work farming the land to help the family make a living. He was the last of his siblings to get married, assuming obligation for looking after my grandmother, “Bigmama” after my grandfather died. She was a widow at an early age and was a formidable and powerful woman. We grew up in Bigmama’s house until I was 17.

I didn’t perceive my father when I was growing up, but I admired him. He had central cohesive source of support and stability and resolve, didn’t flinch at difficultnesses and neared life’s challenges with ease, convinced that he had the capacity to solve whatsoever the circumstance was. He gave thought to his conclusions and did not make them hastily, no matter how speedily an answer was needed. He was a man of few words, but yes always meant yes and no always meant no. At times he would give me his icy glare of displeasure which said more than 1000 words and I would without delay get in line. Everyone thought regarding what they would say to him and how they would approach him to get the best results from him. I never rather got that down, but my brother was masterful at it. Dad was the “go to” person in our family and a great deal of came to him for his counsel and wisdom.

I applied to think that Dad was too hard on me, that he didn’t come to my rescue enough, that not one thing I did was ever good sufficient and that it was totally unlikely to win his approval, altho I tried and tried. Yet I felt secure in knowing that he always had the solution in any given situation, that he knew how to dissect things and figure them out and that he would always have the right answer even when I didn’t want to listen it. I knew there would always be cash someplace even altho he wouldn’t want to spend it. Dad would never spend his last dollar. In fact he seldom expended cash at all unless it was a necessity. He tracked his cash down to the penny, reviewing each receipt for accuracy. He was always capable to give you precise change for anything he necessitated you to buy for him and if he didn’t have precise change, he knew to the penny how much modify was due back to him before I even handed him the receipt. He saved half the cash that was necessitated to build our basi home and paid it off in three years by accelerating the mortgage. That was a outstanding accomplishment in 1975. We grew up living very modestly, but we were rich in love, values and a sense of family. I didn’t realize how precious this gift was until I got out in the world and saw how other persons lived and that every one didn’t experience this kind of closeness.

Dad had a wall of fame in the living room by the fireplace where all of his accomplishment plaques and certificates were proudly displayed. This instilled something in my brother and me and we both yearned to have a good deal of awards with our names on them to hang on that wall with his. This was such a outstanding example of endeavoring to give your best in life. He passed on to us a strong work ethic. I never recall him missing a day from work, unless the doctor insisted. He loved going to work and felt every one must do an honorable day’s work, not the minimum or just sufficient to get a paycheck. He felt that you ought to accomplish all you could in a day. Even when he got home from work, there was still his work in the garden, around the house, mowing the lawn or heading to his favored retreat — his tool shed — where he loved to tinker on things for hours.

He was gifted with his hands and engraved his signature on everything he did. He believed that a person’s name was above all and you must never be afraid to sign your name to something you did if you were proud of the work. He strongly felt that your work will have to speak for you. He was likewise a outstanding writer, capable to pen his heart on paper mesmerizing his readers with only had a grade school education. He left me this wondrous heirloom and I find that I have inherited his way of expressing himself through the written word. Although he didn’t talk much, he wrote my brother and me heartfelt letters after we left home, dispensing wisdom, encouragement and pointing out life lessons that would aid us along. I read them, but back then I didn’t know their true worth and value. It is only now that I recognise and perceive what he was attempting to tell me. I desperately wish I had held more of them because they would have an even deeper meaning to me today. They were priceless.

Even in retirement, he had a schedule for himself and worked his to do list as though he was still employed. Each day found him active and working on a lot of project that he had jotted down in his each day journal. There were regarding 100 projects listed in that diary and he crossed them off as he finished them. He held his whole life written in that journal. I do the same thing.

My father passed away while working in his garden. He had expended time with my uncles who were visiting from California and had not gotten to the chores he had planned for himself that day. Rather than put them off for the next day, he started on them at 3 pm to get a heap of of the work completed. He headed for the garden and it was there that the man with the outstanding work ethic took his last breath. It seemed so suitable that he would leave us this way. What a final testament to his life.

Although he has been gone for 16 years, he left a powerful impression on me. He laid the proper foundation from which I built my life from and at long last his doctrine and his methods became crystal clear to me. As I started out to navigate life’s twists and turns on my own traveling I at long last understood what he was attempting to instruct me. His words of wisdom, letters of encouragement and his life example helped me to formulate a map for my life. I ultimately invented the strong constitution and mental toughness that he told me I would need. I was at long last capable to touch the bar. Each day I see how he was shaping my life and proceeds to do so even now. I now comprehend that he set the bar so high because there is always another step that may be taken in climbing the ladder of life. He didn’t want me to become complacent or fail to live up to my God-given potential. I now recognise that parents can’t always come to their children’s rescue if they are to find their way in life. Getting the lesson from faults makes you more inviolable and wiser and pulls you forward in life. He helped me become self reliant and in doing so I learned with regards to a power within me that I would other than as supposed or expected never recognise that I possessed. This was the power that had to be accessed and cultivated that equipped me to do the work I do for women. I found my strength and I am now instructing others how to find theirs.

I see much of my father in me. I find myself being an encourager and sharing wisdom through letters just like he did for me. Sometimes I listen myself speaking and it’s just what Dad would have said. I miss him and wish he was here, but I am satisfied within my soul that I at last got what he was attempting to instruct me. I pledge to pass this worthful bequest on to my son. So with these words and this tribute, I honor him as my father and I honor him as a man.

If you are fortunate sufficient to still have your father with you, call him today and tell him sincerely how much you love and be grateful for him. Listen to his words of wisdom that come from him having lived longer than you. And if for a lot of reason you have grown apart, today is the day to reach out and reconnect. You may get started again. It’s only after you lose him, that you veritably commence to in truth recognise him.

In honor of my father, Talley B. Hobbs (March 11, 1919 – June 10, 1992) Thank you Dad!

~Sharmaine L. Hobbs

Land Of My Fathers 2

ReviewThe Distant Land of My Father begins like a fairy tale: “My father was a millionaire in Shanghai in the 1930s…. On the day he was born, in the province of Shantung, neighbors staged my missionary grandparents, the only Americans for miles, with noodles in outstanding abundance and one hundred chicken eggs, in honor of their son’s birth.” To the young Anna Schoene, life in Shanghai is without doubt magical. There are servants, a luxurious villa, a finelooking mother who smells like Chanel No. 5, and a young, handsome, polo-playing father. Unfortunately, her father is also a smuggler and speculator who loves his freewheeling life more than anything (or anyone) else. Despite warnings, Schoene refuses to leave Shanghai even after the Japanese invade, and his wife and child retreat to Los Angeles; later, he survives imprisonment and torture only to once again choose Shanghai over his family–this time with the Communists moving in.

Bo Caldwell’s sepia-toned evocation of 1930s Shanghai is lovely and physical, and given the built-in drama of it is setting, this firstborn novel ought to have the vividness of a classic movie. Yet the characters stay queerly flat while world events swirl around them. Great chunks of historical exposition seem largely undigested, while Schoene’s final alter of heart fails to ring true. In a sense, however, these shortcomings are besides the point. The Distant Land of My Father is above all a tragic romance, even though one with an strange love interest. Schoene is so besotted with Shanghai that his wife and daughter are hardly as real to him as the city itself. –Mary Park

From Publishers WeeklyCaldwell’s memoirlike original novel begins in 1930s Shanghai, a city where entrepreneurial alien enterprisers may quickly become millionaires and just as quickly lose everything as victims of the volatile political climate. Six-year-old narrator Anna Schoene tells the tale of her insurance salesman/smuggler father, Joseph, the son of American missionaries, whose life-long obsession with the city’s prospects gains him outstanding riches, though it at long last costs him his family and closely his life. Anna worships her father. Her life in Shanghai has been one of privilege, thanks to his shady business dealings. But after a harrowing kidnapping incident, and frighted by the Japanese invasion of China, her mother, Genevieve, flees home to South Pasadena, Calif., taking Anna with her. Joseph is convinced that his connections will keep him safe and refuses to leave. Imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese and subsequently the Chinese Communists, he survives, though he loses everything and is at last deported back to America in 1954. Over the years Anna has distanced herself with regard to emotions from her father, realizing he necessitated cash and power more than he necessitated his family. But when the physically broken and spiritually reborn Joseph returns to California, he reconciles with the grown Anna and her family. The memoir-style structure lends the characters a sure flatness, but Caldwell’s even tone gives the tale a panoramic elegance. Though missing out in narrative vitality, the novel is interesting from a historical perspective and bright with details of prewar Shanghai and Los Angeles.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library JournalThis remarkable original novel by a Washington Post writer tells the story of young Anna, whose bothered kinship with her maddening, enigmatic father, Joseph Schoene, is set versus exotic wartime Shanghai. China-born missionary kid Joe speaks fluent Mandarin and becomes a tremendously successful if somewhat shady import-exporter. With his gorgeous wife, Eve, and their beloved daughter, the family lives a privileged existence, but when the Japanese invade, their life speedily unravels. Joe sends his family to California, but he himself is arrested and jailed. After being briefly reunited with them, he returns to China to remake his fortune only to be interned by the Communists. He survives four grueling years in a exceptionally bad or displeasing prisonhe’s not one thing if not a survivorwhile unlucky Eve succumbs to unhappiness and leukemia. Though her grandmother warns Anna regarding letting Joe back into her life, Anna is conflicted. She has expended less than half her life with her father, and he wounded her badly, but she once loved him very much. Will she betray her tame mother’s memory by permitting him back into her life? This is a moving tale of love and the possibleness of forgiveness, and Caldwell draws the reader in through powerfully drawn emotion and subtle characterization. Recommended for all libraries.Jo Manning, Barry Univ., Miami Shores, FL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Most helpful customer reviews

63 of 65 people found the following review helpful.
I trust you will be just as Wowed as I was!
By Bobby D.
Let me first explain how I came upon reading DISTANT LAND. I was in Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena, CA and noticed the book being promoted. I actually bought it thinking it was a memoir and only upon getting it home realized that it was a fictional memoir, in fact a first novel. Then I noted in Vroman’s magazine that each year the city of Pasadena picks one book for the whole city to read, so that the city has a common cultural experience. For 2007 that book is DISTANT LAND. At the time I did not know the city of South Pasadena plays a significant roll in the narrative. Then next I had to over come the fact that I am not particularly found of novels told in the first person as DISTANT LANDS is narrated by Anna who we meet as a young girl in Shanghai in love with her surroundings and with her father. A Father who appears at ease with being a blond, blue eyed native born Chinese (born of missionary parents). The novel is epic (taking place from the late 30s to the early 80s), yet intimate and a very unique emotional telling of Anna’s life and her Father’s love of Shanghai which we discover consumes him as he commits one poor value judgment over another. The book is brilliant in creating a sense of place and character, you are constantly surprised and will find the last 100 pages will rip tears from right out of your eyes. I understand this is Ms. Caldwell’s first novel and it is simply an amazing, entertaining, and enlightening achievement in what some might classify as an historical novel. But it is really in the end an intimate story of emotions, choices, and consequences, told through terribly real people that have to learn that love is
overcoming the serious faults of those we should (and must) love. The distant land of Anne’s father may have been Shanghai, China, but it was really the emotional distance she felt when her father chooses his love for Shanghai over her and her mother. You come to fell this must be a true memoir as is so believable. This is an outstanding book and I trust you will be just as Wowed by it as I was.

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
Like being transported to 1930′s Shanghai
By RMG
I read this book in one day; I could not put it down. I felt as if I couldn’t read it fast enough; it was like being on a train whose momentum I could not stop, and didn’t wish to stop. The author’s exploration of bustling, commercial Shanghai in the 1930′s and the Japanese invasion of Shanghai from the perspective of the child narrator (Anna) rendered it very real; I had read hardly anything about Shanghai during this historical period, and the writing made me feel as if I were there. I could picture the buildings on the main street, as described by Anna’s father and memorized by the young Anna; I could taste the food sold by vendors; I could feel the fear gripping the city as the Japanese invaded. As the narrator grows, the story takes the reader to California, where Anna and her mother settle after escaping Shanghai at the time of the invasion. The story is a poignant exploration of the relationship between Anna and her father, who decides to remain in Shanghai despite the invasion, and cannot bring himself to permanently return to his wife and daughter, even after his imprisonment later in the novel. As a child, Anna is almost awed by, and worships, her father; he is the pinnacle of a handsome, successful businessman. As she grows older in American, Anna is discouraged by her father’s seeming disinterest in her and her mother, and grows resentful toward and emotionally closed off from him. Anna’s father ultimately returns to California in an effort to renew his relationship with his estranged daughter. It is a tribute to the author’s abilities that the reader cannot help but sympathize with Anna’s father when he realizes that his life’s decisions and hopes have been delusions, and that Shanghai never brought him what is truly important in life. I was truly moved at several points in this novel, by the author’s exploration of relationships and the sweeping nature of historical forces. The ending was also very powerful.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful.
This book is a treasure
By Diane Dreher, Ph.D.
This book is a treasure, a novel that transported me back in time. It is a vivid journey back to the distant land of the narrator’s childhood, the city of Shanghai, her father’s city which he could not bring himself to leave. The book is beautifully, historically accurate. I spent my early childhood in the Far East and have visited Shanghai. I recognized the sights, sounds, tastes, and allure of this magical city. But more than a journey through time and distance, this book is a journey within, to the depths of compassion and the narrator’s own self-discovery. It holds a world of experience between its covers, blending human weakness and dignity, power and beauty. Reading this book is to follow the path with heart.

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