I want to read this right before going to sleep, so I can dream about five centuries of wandering Mennonites.
This is exactly the kind of book I get curious about — that I would heartily grab in a bookstore, feeling as if it were written just for me: a Menno-curious Mennonite still trying to figure out what that even is at this point, and honestly, what it was, what it has been, and how the story of Mennonites over 500 years has generated the threads that weave the web of my own family history.
The book I am talking about is called Lineage: Five Centuries of Mennonites Wondering and Wandering, and it is brand new.
Its author is Dion Martens, and this is his first novel. But I do not think it is solely a novel. It does a lot of teaching of Mennonite history, as we follow an instructor teaching a class on Mennonite history at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.
Interspersed with chapters entitled “Mennonite History Class” are stories and examinations of people along one thread of lineage, from generation to generation. This is no mere list — this is where the names lift off the page — they become human to us, and we come to better understand their place in time.
In this book, the ancestral path that Martens traces — using archival materials and his own imagination — is precisely the same as mine, except I do not think we are related. (I should obviously check Grandma Online!)
In some ways, I feel like this book has undertaken a daunting task: to sum up half a millennia of the activities of this odd people group in story form — in a book you can comfortably hold in your hands.
It certainly does not allow us to get to know these characters too very intimately, yet at the same time he breathes life into age-old documents and ledgers — telling us about the world surrounding these people, and how they responded to and interacted with the world around them.
Having just been to Poland on our own mission to stand in the places our ancestors lived, reading about the 200-plus years our ancestors lived there helped me piece together some of the push and pull of that time and place — between the guilds and kings and swamps and things.
Like many Mennonite stories, Martens takes us inside the experiences of loss across the generations — heartbreaking and often repeated. He manages to make each instance stand on its own, without blending in or making us “get used” to it. Each moment of loss — of spouses, of children, of siblings, of parents — is its own shocking moment.
Something else that’s shocking — the marriage of older women to men half their age. It seems to happen over and over again, and here we see Martens strive to explain the phenomenon. (I’ve seen this mystery in my own family tree, and will have to check if these instances share a timeframe with those in this book.)
There’s also moments of pure joy and happiness, contentment — where we see everyday moments brought to life, stepping into the daily rhythms of life across the centuries.
I’ve dipped in and out of many different historical books on Mennonites but would certainly not call myself an expert — so I’ve learned a great deal from this book! I often found myself remarking to Andrew, “We need to go back to Amsterdam — there’s stuff we missed seeing!” Alongside, of course, our lament that Ukraine continues to feel beyond our reach.
There are many ancestral footsteps we wish to walk in, and this book helps trace the way.