Thursday, December 2, 2010

Same Kind of Different as Me By Ron Hall and Denver Moore

I read the Same Kind of Different as Me a while ago but am just now reviewing it. It is the story of an art dealer with a zealous wife that had her life dramatically altered by helping out with the homeless through their church. Along the way, he meets Denver who was a former slave but was now a runaway after various issues he encountered earlier in life. Ron's wife Deborah was the one to really initiate the beginning of the family's relationship with Denver and it ended up being one where they were able to bless each other in different ways. Eventually, Deborah gets extremely sick and ends up dying yet the relationship with Ron and Denver goes on.

In general, the book tended to carry with it a fairly sappy tone that was fairly hard to shake throughout reading it which was unfortunate because this truly was an incredible story of two polar opposites(seemingly in every way) forming an incredible friendship. I think part of this stems from it being responsive to the death of Deborah because she is made out to be a little too perfect, which is understandable given the relationship they each had with her, but it detracts from the title(and hence, purpose) of the book. I think the biggest thing to take from this was that we have the ability to learn so much from our interactions with people of all different kinds. Our shared humanity with others is enough to not simply write them off or assume who/what they are but to fully seek to reach out to others. This is a crucial takeaway from this book that hopefully encourages many people to look into strangers eyes and look beyond their exterior.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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