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Book by Judy Reeves
Reviewed by Pennell Paugh
November 8, 2023 (San Diego) – In When Your Heart Says Go, San Diego author Judy Reeves uses memories in her journals, fragments from her writing practice notebooks, short stories, flashes of both fiction and nonfiction, personal narrative essays, and poems to share a piece of her life from thirty years ago. Mourning the loss of her husband, she sold her property and belongings to spend a year on her own doing intense self-reflection and befriending people at AA meetings while she traveled through Europe.
Reeves’s story takes readers from San Diego through eleven European countries, to the Soviet Union, and finally to India. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm drove her home.
To show a sample of her work, on her visit to Copenhagen, she says:
Rosenborg Castle, constructed in the early seventeenth century, rises tall and many towered inside the royal gardens. Continuing as a tourist, I pay the small fee and go inside the polished ornate halls where silver fenders stand against fancy fireplaces. I amble through a tile room, a mirror room, rooms where my huaraches scuff intricately designed floors. A royal dining service is displayed on a long table with golden dishes. Next an array of dozens and dozens of jeweled boxes. I imagine royal underwear carefully folded and placed in these glittering boxes.
Silver lions as large as carousel horses guard a throne also made of silver. And all manner of things fashioned of gold—dishes, crowns, button boxes, book covers, letter openers, scissors, glasses, pens, inkwells, eating utensils and service pieces—solid gold, gold-plated, gold filigree, and pearls of gold strung together on golden threads. Necklaces and pins and earrings set with stones so large they look unreal. Opals and pearls and sapphires, a smoky topaz as large as my fist. A necklace, brooch, and ring of diamonds and emeralds, another of pearls, another simply diamonds—except there is nothing simple about this collection.
Among all this wealth, all these treasures, used and worn by those born into it through no effort of their own except that they came through the royal birth canal and into the royal cradle, I reflect on my own birth into a Midwestern working-class family and consider what I label myself, lucky.
Reeves’s memoir travel book is beautifully written. Her approach is original—showing a woman who wants to fit and belong somewhere in the world. Pulling much of her book’s contents from her journal, she openly confesses to faults and thoughts that most of us keep hidden. I found her refreshing honesty liberating me. Her book gives me permission to shine light on my internal shadows.
To recover from the loss of her husband, she needs to redefine her sense of self in an environment that supports who she is.
Cofounder of San Diego Writers, Ink, Reeves, who is 80, lives in North Park and has two adult children and five grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She is an award-winning writer. Her books include A Writer’s Book of Days and Wild Women, Wild Voices. In addition to her books on the craft of writing, she has also published fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. When Your Heart Says Go is her first memoir.
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