Rowing to Sweden: Essays on Faith, Love, Politics and Movies

Fredrick Barton's Rowing to Sweden is a diverse, deeply compelling collection of essays that intertwine film and cultural criticism with the author's personal observations and experiences. Intellectual, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, these essays are by turn ironic, delightful, and sometimes disturbing as they engage and question issues of faith, war, violence, and race. This is a profound collection of work by a man of feeling and integrity, a celebration of hard-won truths about art and life.---Kristen Iversen, author of Molly Brown: Unravelling the Myth

In Rowing to Sweden, Fredrick Barton continues the very best of the essay tradition: wisdom, grace, a stubborn curiosity, and the urge to follow an idea wherever it leads. Lucky for the reader, Barton's ideas always lead to fascinating terrain: spirituality, morality, race, contemporary politics, and the author's enduring love of cinema. An intelligent book that will open both heart and mind.---Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and Desire

When someone as smart and big-hearted as Rick Barton tackles subjects as diverse as faith, family, God, government, movies, war and literature, the result is a rich, intricately woven tapestry of memoir and criticism, a multi-layered essaying on the very things that make our everyday lives meaningful and maddening. Rowing to Sweden is a generous gift of words.---Steven Church, author of Theoretical Killings, Essays and Accidents