Our summer 2024 project is Home Again and Again: Recollections, Stories, Guideposts by Dr. Ann Gentry Recine and Louis Recine. In this engaging memoir, the authors take readers on a journey through Ann’s life of controlled chaos, faith, and positive perspectives. We had to know more about the duo behind it all , so we  jumped at the chance for an exclusive interview.

Dr. Ann Gentry Recine and Louis Recine

Home Again and Again features a lot of your life in Wisconsin. Do you feel you have found a home here in the badger state?

I think my husband and I proved to ourselves that we were Badgers when we sold our house in Eau Claire and moved away from Wisconsin in the 1990s, to a Southern state—only to move back in nine months. Even though our family experienced amazing Southern hospitality, we deeply regretted selling our Eau Claire East Hill house! We were so viscerally homesick for our neighborhood, that we actually bought the house behind our old house. Yes, I can now see that beloved house with its birch trees and lamp post from the window of the room I am writing in. Sigh! We are at home in a Badger state, in a Badger town, and glad of it.

With so much of the story based around your own experiences, how has your educational background impacted your story?

I think, the university Carillon tower bells and old campus buildings of my childhood imprinted on me while I was being strolled in my baby buggy. You know those dreams where you go to school or are lost in a maze of buildings? They are always set for me on a campus, with students passing me on a sidewalk, when I realize I forgot to get dressed or am two weeks late on an assignment. Somehow, having gotten through a doctorate degree and a post-master’s degree (to the possible surprise of my father), I have nothing but empathy for the adrenaline of a high-stakes exam or the loneliness of a big lecture hall. I guess the biggest takeaway from my educational background is that the school experience can be scary, and we need each other to make it as “homey” and warm a place as possible. Home, Again and Again is both a view of the human experience of home from the balcony and from the face-to-face experience. And, as an academic, I see the importance of telling the story from both places, in order to capture the truth and love.

There are many sailing anecdotes, and it seems to be an important hobby of yours. Is there a favorite memory or moment that you would like to share with us that didn’t make it into your book?

I’m so glad you asked. I will try to be brief. You know, I want to wax lyrical about sailing as an analogy to home. Here’s just one anecdote:

When I was holding my sleepy, warm baby daughter in the sunny kitchen of our duplex, I did not fathom how challenging it would be to plan a fun and interesting vacation for her when she became a teen. In the ’90s, when my infant had become a teen, I took her from Wisconsin to visit our East Coast family and friends we had known for decades. I wondered if sailing would be as fun for her as it was for me as a teen. We took a sail through history, connecting us to our personal history, our ancestors’ homes, and the home of our nation’s birth. Would picnicking with three grown-ups and four kids on a boat be fun? We pushed off from the dock of the children’s grandparents on Virginia’s lower peninsula, only miles away from the old Jamestown settlement that my ancestors had come to in the 1600s. The adults were singing acapella in harmony as we sailed past the place where the British had surrendered to us in the Revolutionary War. 

The skipper’s dad, named Jim, a shipyard worker and a funny and intense youth leader in his Presbyterian church, had carefully chosen a calm night by checking the wind report to avoid coastal storms. Sailing in the old, refurbished boat (that had been in their family before our children were born) on the deep blue York River at night—the streaming wake of the boat was lit by moonlight. Stars and beautiful lights on the passing boats and buoys, yellow lights on the shoreline winked as we glided by. Strikingly beautiful memories like sailing on the York give us hope and protect us from the inevitable storms of life. That night, my teenage daughter said, “I love the singing!” “I really like Jim!” She took it all in as we glided along, and she listened while we blended the bass, alto, and soprano parts of a song written in 1719 about “Our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast.”

After having a dedicated career in the medical field and teaching, what was the main inspiration behind your book Home Again and Again?

Death. Yes, definitely death. I have had the privilege of taking care of a lot of dying people and their families. I have a post-master’s degree in Geriatrics from Case Western University and am board-certified in Geriatrics, so I have minute details of evidence that I am mortal. My gray hair, hearing aids, slower walking speed, and the sagging skin of my arms that bob when I move, are evidence of that. In a relatively short time, I will not be able to produce something meaningful and affordable that may make a positive difference in someone’s life and will serve to celebrate the beauty I have experienced on this earth.

Was it challenging to decide which moments and memories to recollect and how to share those details with an audience?

Absolutely! I have so many things that have happened in my life: like the interaction with a security guard on the top of the capitol building, when I skipped high school, how my husband sometimes has the credits roll at the end of his dreams, and how we had a pet snake lost in the house before a visit of some school officials. However, I couldn’t figure out how to wedge them into this book on the topic of home. I am sure these are all the things you might want to know more about. Thank you, beta readers, for helping me stay on topic with my choices of memorable moments so I would make the clearest picture of all things “home.” For sure, it’s challenging. Sometimes, there are moments and memories I really want to talk about, such as my clever strategy for avoiding the re-occurrence of the recent difficult dining-room debacle involving a guest setting the table with some pick-up sticks that got confused with chopsticks. However, working with the UWGB Teaching Press has helped me choose wisely when I have an urge to share.

What was the most enjoyable part of the writing process and publication?

If I’m being honest, my favorite part of the writing process is that I can do it in my pajamas. My husband can sit opposite me, wearing two pairs of glasses (as he is now) and needing a shave, and the writing keeps flowing. Usually, I have to put on a dress or a lab coat and a stethoscope around my neck to work, so this is nice. Seriously, (if I am being honest again) the experience of writing about the beauty and resilience of homes re-enchanted my world. Suffering is a part of life, and it is in every home. Writing these stories helped us to see that even though there may be a snake in our garden, there is the thrill of roses and baby bunnies, too. We enjoyed writing in the hope that the words may help even one other person make sense of their world.

Also very enjoyable was the publication process with Professor Rebecca Meacham and her students and interns! Partnering with this brilliant team has really helped us develop this book. We have had some very sweet times connecting via Zoom, which we did not do in our pajamas, even though they will have to trust us that we were not wearing our pajama bottoms on the video calls.

When during the writing and publication process did you decide your story would be a memoir?

Well, we had planned that our first book would be the book “everyone” has been requesting of us, a book that distills the 300-level honors class we teach at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, The Multicultural Art and Science of Forgiveness. But when I sat down to write, this one popped up. Our first book. (OK, that is a little like introducing Lou as my “first husband” since I don’t have a second.) Anyway, this book started as something to leave for grandkids to read when we were long gone, and they were grown-ups, and Lou kept saying, “It’s for more than our grandkids.” I wondered if that was so, but he encouraged me to “just keep going,” and it turned into a love story, a memorial, a tribute to homes, places, and people in our hearts, complete with discussion questions so people can talk about their own story of home.

Your husband Lou and you have been married for 47 years—how did that affect your narratives and working as co-authors?

I fell in love with Lou when he was 19 years old, and he let me read his journals. He is a great writer, has worked for a publishing company, and has a photographic memory. So, if you’re going to have someone finish your sentences, he is great at it! He has long been my co-author on academic peer-reviewed journal articles, so this was just a continuation of a long conversation we have had for years on how to “improve that sentence” or “convey the essence.” We don’t always agree on the best way to say something, but we are curious about each other’s ideas, so writing together is as much play as work. His feedback after listening to me read drafts of the narratives helped me refine them. I am probably the most babied writer in Wisconsin, with my co-author, tech support, breakfast maker, and muse usually in the same room.

You have shared many heart-felt memories in your book. What would be the one lesson that you feel should be emphasized?

Hope. Home Again and Again is about finding and re-finding (when it’s lost) the peace and strength of home. It’s about the low door in the garden wall that opens to a growth mindset of hope. In our littleness, we don’t know what the future will bring, but for me, hope has come through stories about what home is or could be and through science and faith. So, these heartfelt stories of the beauty of home in Wisconsin, Illinois, and New England, sprinkled with science and faith, have the aim of giving hope. I especially want these stories to help when someone is in the “thick of it.” I hope they will serve as that blue sky and patch of bright white clouds we look for on a rainy day and treasure on a clear day.

This is your first book, but it is not the first time you have been published. With many academic articles out there, has this process felt different than those?

The process has felt way different! You aren’t allowed any exclamation points or jokes in academic science-based articles, so I felt I had to write for peer-reviewed journals with the fun side of my brain tied behind my back.

After going through the writing and publication process, do you ever see yourself writing another book in the future?

Yes, we are continuing to work on a forgiveness self-help book based on our research and the forgiveness honors class we teach at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. When they finish the class, the students say “wow” to the layers of the biology, geography, and anthropology of forgiveness and how it is woven through art, music, and literature through the ages. People say, “Hey, we will never be honor students, but we want some.” So, we are trying to put this class and what global civilization has discovered about forgiveness into a book for everyone.

Home Again and Again: Recollections, Stories, Guideposts by Dr. Ann Gentry Recine and Louis Recine is set to launch on August 10th at @ Roots Art and Wine Gallery in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Dotters Books will be taking pre-orders at the August 10 launch event, and via their website.

For more information on Home Again and Again: Recollections, Stories, Guideposts by: Dr. Ann Gentry Recine and Louis Recine, author interviews, or event details, please contact the author.