In her previous memoir, the award-winning Here If You Need Me, Kate Braestrup established herself as a warm, witty and deeply moving writer, revealing how the devastating loss of her husband led her to open her heart in new directions. Following his unfulfilled dream, she threw herself into ministerial training and became a member of the clergy—and a living example of the advice she gives in her new book: “If your heart breaks, let it break open. Love more.”

Fans of her richly enlightening first-person narrative will surely love Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, which continues the story of her life as the backdrop for her observations and meditations as a wife, mother and woman of the cloth. And what a story it is! Braestrup’s memoir reads like a work of fiction: at 17 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, only to find out after two emotionally torturous years that she didn’t have the disease; in fact, she wasn’t sick at all. And the tales of her ministry with the men who work outdoors in the Maine Warden Service, often in grim circumstances—such as searching for the bodies of a pilot and his 14-year-old daughter—are full of understated pathos.

As Braestrup navigates the uncharted waters of a later-in-life romance and a new marriage, she is also witness to the heartbreak and turmoil that love brings to the fragile human heart, especially when so many “happily-ever-afters” end prematurely in divorce. And, as chaplain, she must also comfort those who are suffering the anguish of irrevocable loss—when death takes a loved one. “Life is short,” she recognizes, “and pain engraves its memories in your flesh.” Still, she believes that “every soul is called to love and serve,” and her advice remains straightforward and simple—love more. “Start with your siblings, or your spouse, or your parents, but don’t stop there. Love whoever needs what you have; love the ones who have been placed in your path.” In Marriage and Other Acts of Charity, with grace and style, Braestrup leads the way.

Linda Stankard is a Realtor in Rockland County, New York.

Southern literature is awash in stories about sensitive young boys with domineering mothers, dissolute fathers and quirky extended families. Malcolm Jones’ Little Boy Blues partakes of all these elements, but he doesn’t turn any of them into the usual cut-and-paste stereotypes.

Now a cultural critic for Newsweek, Jones writes of his early boyhood years in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and of the emotional pain and confusion his schoolteacher mother and alcoholic father incidentally inflicted on him. Jones was born in 1952, 10 years after his parents married. By the time he came along—he would be an only child—his father was already drinking heavily, unable to keep a job and often absent for long and unexplained periods. When Jones was 11, his parents divorced. His mother made the most of her “martyrdom,” always letting her “brave little man” know how much she depended on him to reflect well on her. Consequently, he grew up pretty much a loner. If there were best friends or wise teachers in whom Jones confided or found ongoing solace, he fails to mention them.

Instead, Jones turned to music, movies and television for comfort. He recalls being enraptured by an ancient Chris Bouchillon phonograph record he found at his grandmother’s house when he was five. Then there was the summer he spent with his father, during which they would sit together in the evening and watch the Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs TV show. Often he and his mother attended movies together, after which they would discuss them. But even here, her discontent and self-absorption always tainted the experience.

Jones writes with a curiously detached tone, almost as if he’s describing someone else, and he offers no happy ending, no moments of lightheartedness. Although he remained a dutiful son, the tension between who he was and who his mother wanted him to be never abated. She died in 2004, when she was 90. “My mother hated change, especially in me,” he concludes. “But that took years to figure out.”

Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.