Like The Book of Ruth

by Mary Beth Duffey

Mark Chmiel’s The Book of Mev echoes the themes of the scriptural Book of Ruth: “Wherever you go, I will go. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” But here the pact is between a young man and a young woman, who move from “spiritual flirting” at Maryknoll to a deepening awareness of their love for each other and for the marginalized people of the world. From Cambridge to San Francisco to St. Louis, Mark and Mev discover their vocations separately and together in that “people/God experience” that recalls the Book of Ruth.

Mev Puelo’s photography of faces from Haiti, El Salvador and Chiapas is a visual meditation for Mark Chmiel’s story. It is the story of falling in “love at first laugh” but also the unflinching chronicle of a young woman’s struggle with cancer.

In The Book of Mev, Mark Chmiel crafts a work of literary art, a work of spiritual and very earthy love.

Mary Beth is professor of English at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee.