Book Review: "Same Kind of Different as Me"

[JimB]

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Same Kind of Different as Me
Ron Hall & Denver Moore
(Thomas Nelson, 224pgs, $15p)

When he told me it was the best book he ever read I, of course, wanted to know what it was about. “It’s hard to say,” he said, “but it’s the best book I ever read.” He was talking about “Same Kind of Different as Me,” a book that has hovered near the top of the New York Times Bestseller list for weeks. You have to admit, that is quite an accomplishment; especially for a book originally published for a narrower Christian market.

So, I decided to look into it.

I purchased a copy of my own and was immediately captured by the story. Not many books make me cry or laugh out loud. This one did. Several times. Late into the night.

Told in two voices, the book is an unlikely but true account, telling its story from the perspective of dissimilar men brought together by a woman of exceptional insight. Ron Hall is an urbane middle-aged international art dealer who travels the world buying and selling rare works of art for the mega-affluent. It had made him rich and self-absorbed and while his wealth had grown, he had also grown away from his family . . . and from God. The other central character is Denver Moore, an illiterate homeless former Louisiana sharecropper who had walked away from the cotton fields thirty years before and found that, while life on the streets was difficult, it was easier than being a twentieth-century slave. The streets had made him savvy, suspicious, and mean.

It was in a Fort Worth homeless shelter that the two men met, Ron serving food (every Tuesday as his token “Christian” obligation but, really, at the dogged insistence of his determined wife, Deborah,) and the other the wary recipient of Ron’s empty charity. Deborah is the catalyst of the story. She is a volunteer, prompted by faith, love, and persistence to become increasingly involved in the downtown mission. She singles out the distrustful Denver and insists that her husband reach out to him, sensing that in this homeless castoff is someone special to God’s purpose. Over time she maneuvers the guarded Denver and her Suburban-driving, Starbucks-drinking husband into a friendship that grows once "Mr. Tuesday" (as Ron was called) realizes the man he has been calling Dallas is actually named Denver. With uncertainty over vast social differences coupled with an uncanny revelation of their similarities, the story of intertwining lives knots decisively when Deborah suddenly develops colon cancer and dies leaving the two men to face their relationship without her.

Denver summarizes the story on the final page, saying, “I used to spend a lot of time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gon’ have no kind a’ future. But I found that everybody’s different—the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the same road God done set in front of us. The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain’t no final restin place. So, in a way, we is all homeless—just working our way toward home.”

For more information go to http://www.samekindofdifferentasme.com/

 

[KleinerApfel]

Thanks for the recommendation Jim.
My copy has to come across from Canada, so I'll have to wait a bit, but I loved the video clip on the site, looks a great read.