Jedidiah Jenkins: Like Streams to the Ocean, Convergent (Penguin Random House US), 9780593137239, hardback, available also by Penguin UK, Ebury

During the first lockdown in March 2020, I read Jedidiah Jenkins wonderful travel memoir “To Shake the Sleeping Self” which allowed me to travel with him in spirit through the Americas from Oregon to Patagonia on bicycle. I loved his honesty, reflectiveness and adventurous spirit paired with his struggle on this trip to come to terms with his evangelical upbringing and being gay. 

My eyes lit up when I heard that a new book was in the works, “Like Streams to the Ocean”, a very different book, essays with the under title “Notes on Ego, Love and the Things That Make Us Who We Are”.  Jedidiah examines what made him the person he had become at age 38, “talks” warmly with his readers  about ego, work, death, love, being gay, denying himself sex for a very long time due to his Christian upbringing, the meaning of family, friendships and the importance of chosen family. The book is written in snippets, an ongoing conversation one would have with a friend.  

I am probably not the target age group as a reader, could be his mother age wise really, which made some of his musings less relevant to me than it would to a younger person  but most essays are definitely universal, authentic and thought provoking. “Like Streams to the Ocean” did not mean as much to me as his travel memoir but then it is such a different book. His philosophical, kind and open thoughts made me reflect upon things in my own life during these grey days of a long lockdown winter.