‘Prayers For Families’ About Everyday Holiness

If charity begins at home, then so does a love of religion.

That, at least, is the point made by a slim little book by Spokane author Kathleen Finley titled “Dear God: Prayers for Families With Children” (Twenty-Third Publications, 77 pages, $7.95 paperback).

“Your home, any home, is where the Good News is first lived, communicated, felt, and celebrated,” Finley says in her introduction. In that sense, she writes, “family prayer and celebration are not about making family life holy or bringing God into your home, but about realizing the holiness that is already there.”

Finley has compiled some 58 prayers on a variety of subjects, from the daily act of waking up to the handling of a death in the family (even the death of a pet). In each, her prose is as simple as her message:

“Dear God,” Finley writes in “Prayer for Bath or Shower,” “thanks for my body/ and for the water to wash it with.”

Check for “Dear God: Prayers for Families With Children” in area bookstores. Or order it through the Mystic, Conn.-based publishers (800) 321-0411.

Pages of history

Ye Galleon Press, the small publisher in Fairfield, Wash., has just finished printing two examples of its specialties: Pacific Northwest Americana and reprints of rare Western U.S. history.

The first is a “biographical geography” by Bette E. Meyer titled “For George Wright: Not Only Where the Band Played” (132 pages, $19.95, $14.95 paperback). The author, once the development director and marketing coordinator for Holy Names Center, has collected a mass of information about the fort that was founded on Sept. 24, 1891.

The reprint is titled “History of Placer and Quartz Gold Mining in the Coeur d’Alene District” (132 pages, $22.50, $14.95 paperback) and is the master’s degree thesis of Robert Wayne Smith, who was seeking an M.A. in history from the University of Idaho in 1932. Despite its academic source, Smith’s book is actually a readable study of old Coeur d’Alene. For information on Ye Galleon books, call 283-2422.

Speaking of reprints…

While Robert E. Lee was surrendering his sword at Appomattox, and even after the fact, the Civil War was still.. well, if not raging then at least simmering.

And the final fire heated up the Bering Sea.

Historian Murray Morgan made that clear in his 1948 book “Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah” (Washington State University Press, 336 pages, $19.95 paperback). In his book, Morgan told of the Shenandoah, which spent the final year of the war and six months more destroying Union shipping in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.

Before it finally surrendered in England on Nov. 6, 1865, the Shenandoah had engaged 38 enemy ships, releasing six and destroying the others.

The new edition of Morgan’s book includes a revised bibliography, which charitably lists subsequent book studies of the same subject, such as John R. Bockstoce’s “Whales, Ice and Men: The History of Whaling in the Western Arctic” (University of Washington Press, 1986).

For further information, call WSU Press at (800) 354-7360.

Just for kids

The Eastern Washington University Bookstore is holding the first of what it hopes will be an ongoing Saturday Morning children’s series with a special program at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

Eastern students of children’s literature will lead a story and activity time with a Halloween theme. The event, which will be held at Eastern’s Pence Union Building on the Cheney campus, is free and open to the public.

For further information, call the University Bookstore at 359-2776.

The reader board

Ann Rule, author of “Dead By Sunset,” will read from her book at 7:30 tonight at Auntie’s Bookstore. On the same program, Seattle novelist Donna Anders will read from her new book “The Flower Man.”

, DataTimes