The Time Mom Met Hitler, Frost Came to Dinner, and I Heard the Greatest Story Ever Told: A Memoir by Dikkon Eberhart (Tyndale House)
Dikkon Eberhart’s memoir tells of growing up in the shadow of a well-known poet father and a well-traveled, well-to-do mother who once met Adolph Hitler. The author’s parents were powerful icons who inhabited every corner of his world. His father, Richard Eberhart, followed Robert Frost as poet laureate of the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1966. His mother’s great-grandfather founded the floor-wax company, Butcher Polish.
Eberhart dinner guests inhabit the pages of Who’s Who in American Poetry—Frost, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath and more. They read bedtime stories to Dikkon and his sister and occasionally helped with homework. In that world, young Eberhart struggled to find his own identity, a struggle that lasted until after his father died at age 101.
In the prologue, the author offers a hint why a Christian publisher released the book. Then in 230 pages, Dikkon Eberhart relates the details of his complicated life and complex relationships. In spite of a fine education and a loving wife and children, he continually felt a profound sense of aloneness. The final 33 pages of the book tell the rest of Eberhart’s story.
Lovers of American literature will revel in the author’s tales of legendary writers and his early journey. Christians will find joy in the book because “God wins.”
Kathy Robinson Hillman, president
Baptist General Convention of Texas
Waco
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