I just had to share this review, written by Roger Wright, a good friend of mine in Chicago, and a tremendous writer in his own right:
In “Rich People Shop Here” Dennis Welch doesn’t just share a story. He literally welcomes the world. Makes sure we’re all comfortable around the campfire of life. This is a book for everyone.
The book’s “radical welcome” unfolds on every page as Welch invites the world inside the home where he grew up on Deerfield Street in Houston. The Welch home on Deerfield Street was the polar opposite of the white picket fence television images of “Leave it To Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” that gave rise to the universal cultural images of what it meant to grow up in a “normal” family.
Sharing his story in the larger light of his mother Patsy and his father Ron with a world class honesty and clarity; enables the reader to really get to know these folks in all their moments of brutal life challenges, soaring joys, and laugh out loud memories. NOTHING is idealized in this book. There is a total absence of clichés. Not a shred of doubt that every single person in this book is as real as can be. And is also an individual unlike anybody else.
So what happens in this sharing of a story is that the reader, any reader, is also invited to begin reflecting on all the ways they too are individuals, have had their taste of real life joys and sorrows, and even moments of unexplainable, unseen mystery. The reader is left feeling glad to know Patsy and all the other real people in the book. The reader feels welcome.
Welch’s gentle touch as a storyteller reflects a talent of one born to do the work of telling stories that welcome. Like a warm Houston rain with flashes of Larry McMurtry, but with a voice that is totally his own; Welch then goes on to do something very rare: he creates a picture of a living, breathing church that would also welcome anyone. In sharp contrast to the shrill, divisive, and downright destructive voices of religion in America today; Welch portrays a church that, like the Welch household, would extend the hand of welcome to anyone. A church that would do the incredibly simple sounding work of “treating a neighbor as you would yourself.”
A philosopher once commented that “The trouble with Christianity is that nobody has ever tried it.”
That is unfortunately all too often true.
But in “Rich People Shop Here” Dennis Welch proves the philosopher wrong.
This is a story told with grace. A deceptively simple story to learn from, talk about and remember.
It’s a story that welcomes everyone.
