A Secret Envy of the Unsaved

Melanie Marttila is a Sudbury-based freelance writer and writing
consultant.

Rebecca Fredrickson offers readers a unique and engaging peek into the
world of a young woman growing up in an evangelical community. Although
she writes of prayer meetings, speaking in tongues, and casting out, her
poetry is not cloyingly spiritual. In the title poem, the narrator
recounts how the bus driver used to try to get her to swear. She
couldn’t, not because swearing was bad, but because “she’s afraid
to speak.”

Fredrickson’s words are grounded in a reality born of suffering, a
reality in which “faith slips away” and the poet “can trace the
trouble back to not seeing Jesus / when he came, after service, to
collect / his money from behind the pulpit.” In the end, there is
little we can do but “pick up the wreckage and give thanks.”

El Salvador’s women on Easter Sunday crawl to the cathedral in search
of salvation for their children. Fredrickson writes the heartbreaking
truth that all of our mothers “are begging for some bright hem.”
Migraines, the death of loved ones and pets, sex, love, hockey, and
swimming also populate Fredrickson’s poems with their rich metaphors.
The poet shows us the common threads that unite all experience, and
offers readers a way into her world not as observers, but as
participants. This collection deserves a place in any poetry section.