Trespassers Will Be Baptized, by Elizabeth Emerson Hancock

Elizabeth Emerson Hancock apparently has some issues with her Southern Baptist upbringing.  I picked this up randomly at the library, amused by the title.  She tells of her entrepreneurial childhood; during the family yard sale, she offered to baptized all comers in the family pool.  Cute.  I hoped for some more good stories.  The blurbs on the back cover promise "laugh-out-loud funny and touching at the same time" and "hilarious and touching in turn."  I can say Trespassers Will Be Baptized is mildly amusing and sometimes a little touching, but not much more than that.  I think I may be the wrong audience, anyway.  Perhaps she's aiming for the middle-aged to older female reader.

Hancock distances herself from her Southern Baptist roots, with criticism a little too biting.  Her experience in rural Kentucky perhaps tainted her view.  I know plenty of Southern Baptists who are intelligent, cultured, and theologically wise.  I wonder if her criticisms of Southern Baptists as dumb, moralistic, and simplistic might show her classism against the South, now that she is a Harvard educated east coast lawyer.

I guess I was really more bored than offended by her stories.  Whatever the case, I was more than ready to be through with this book.