Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You're Gonna Be Okay

by Sean Dietrich

Overview

From celebrated storyteller "Sean of the South" comes an unforgettable memoir of love, loss, the friction of family memories, and the unlikely hope that you're gonna be alright.

Sean Dietrich was twelve years old when he scattered his father's ashes from the mountain range. His father was a man who lived for baseball, a steel worker with a ready wink, who once scaled a fifty-foot tree just to hang a tire swing for his son. He was also the stranger who tried to kidnap and kill Sean's mother before pulling the trigger on himself. He was a childhood hero, now reduced to a man in a box.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? is the story of what happens after the unthinkable, and the journey we all must make in finding the courage to stop the cycles of the past from laying claim to our future.

Sean was a seventh-grade drop-out, a dishwasher then a construction worker to help his mother and sister scrape by, and a self-described "nobody with a sad story behind him." Yet he cannot deny the glimmers of life's goodness even amid its rough edges. Such goodness becomes even harder to deny when Sean meets the love of his life at a fried chicken church potluck, and harder still when his lifelong love of storytelling leads him to stages across the southeast, where he is known and loved as "Sean of the South."

A story that will stay with you long after the final page, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? testifies to the strength that lives within us all to make our peace with the past and look to the future with renewed hope and wonder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310355755
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	03/10/2020
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	412,366
Product dimensions:	5.65(w) x 8.35(h) x 1.15(d)

About the Author

Sean Dietrich is a columnist, podcaster, stand-up storyteller, and novelist known for his commentary on life in the American South. His work has appeared in Southern Living, Good Grit, South magazine, and other publications, and he has authored fourteen books. Follow Sean’s daily writing at seandietrich.com or @seanofthesouth on Instagram.

Table of Contents

1 Camp Creek 11

2 Paper Plates 15

3 Caskets 25

4 Cardboard Boxes 31

5 "Rose Colored Glasses" 37

6 Pikes Peak 45

7 Paper Routes 53

8 Bad Dreams 64

9 Six Old Strings 76

10 And It Was Mary 84

11 Portrait of the Baptist as a Young Man 93

12 Cathead Biscuits 101

13 Where River Ends 106

14 Redman 111

15 Bowties and Moonshine 118

16 Melted Ice Cream 122

17 Big Man on Campus 131

18 Fools and Children 138

19 Girls Become Women 144

20 Visiting the Dead 148

21 Trailer Courts 154

22 Private Tutors 161

23 Late Mourning 169

24 Old Red 174

25 Los Planos 178

26 The Boy Columnist 185

27 World Series Champs 195

28 Forgetting to Forget 202

29 Sean of the South 207

30 Ellie Mae 218

31 The Funeral 225

32 On the Road Again 228

33 You're Doing It 230

34 Humboldt Beginnings 237

35 Our House 245

36 Purple Mountains Majesties 250

37 Climb Every Mountain 254

38 The Showman 261

Editorial Reviews

'This memoir is a spark of hope to those who need it.'

Deep South Magazine

01/01/2020

Dietrich (Star of Alabama) extends the narrative of his popular blog "Sean of the South" with this deeply personal memoir. A self-declared simple storyteller who champions finding a way to shine the light of positivity, Dietrich shifts the lens a bit as he unpacks his own tragedy. Chapters slowly unfold how a 12-year-old copes with the loss of a father to suicide; a parent who had been his hero but has also committed domestic violence. Without shame, Dietrich shares his coming-of-age struggles, from dropping out of school in the seventh grade to washing dishes and working construction to the arduous process of completing community college years later. More sorrowful stories are interspersed with amusing antics from Dietrich's beloved dog, Ellie Mae, as well as the author's own self-deprecating quips on Southern living. What could easily have been a heavy read is uplifted with Dietrich's quirky one-liners told with a big-hearted, Southern voice. VERDICT Followers of "Sean of the South" or Dietrich's podcast will relish this revelatory, faith-filled memoir.—Angela Forret, State Lib. of Iowa

Library Journal