Journalist Jeff Chu's wise, thoughtful second memoir, Good Soil, explores love, loss, complicated identities, and the power of community through his experience working on his seminary's farm. After enrolling at Princeton Theological Seminary at the age of 39, Chu took one class--and then many more--at the "Farminary," a working farm designed to provide a hands-on place for students to wrestle with spiritual questions while getting their hands (literally) dirty. Chu's time at the Farminary would prove transformative, and as he took part in its day-to-day tasks of life, he watched metaphors of growth, tending, harvest, roots, and flourishing--not to mention compost--come to life before his eyes.
Chu (Does Jesus Really Love Me?) lushly describes the community he found at the Farminary, including farm director Nate and fellow student Pearl, a Black woman whose peripatetic life had made her a self-proclaimed "child of many soils." As Chu learned the basics of planting, watering, weeding, and other essential tasks, he also began to develop a theology of compost and dirt.
Alongside Chu's work at the Farminary, he digs into the layers of his own story as the gay son of Christian Chinese immigrants. He also describes (in mouthwatering detail) the feast he prepared for friends and colleagues as his final Farminary project, and he recounts the loss of his dear friend and fellow author Rachel Held Evans (whose posthumous memoir, Wholehearted Faith, he edited).
With grace, sensitivity, and self-deprecating humor, Chu examines the question of belonging, the gifts of every season, and the continuing challenge of caring faithfully for the (literal and metaphorical) soil of one's own life. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams