Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them: Schizophrenia Through a Mother’s Eyes, by Simonetta Carr. Forward by Michael Horton. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2019. Pp. 359. $15.99 (softcover). ISBN-13: 978-1629953960. [Reviewed by Barrett L. Gritters.]

One of the best commendations I can think of giving a book is that I would like to meet its author. This is the case for Broken Pieces, a book written by a Christian mother about her experience of dealing with her son’s affliction we call schizophrenia. The heartbreaking story is written by a godly mother of eight children who does not hide the pain of the family or the sin that is always involved in such struggles. But it is written with the grace that does not say everything that could be said, and yet says enough to make the reader feel the family’s pain and shame and cry with their tears. The openness and humility of the author makes one say, “This is the kind of person that would make a good friend.” The author writes in such a way that you would believe her to be the kind of person most people would like to meet.

Simonetta Carr is also the award-winning author of many— mostly children’s—books. She was an elementary school teach er, has home-schooled her own children, writes for magazines, and translates works to and from Italian, her native tongue. She is a member of a United Reformed Church in San Diego, California.

Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them is divided into two parts. Part one is “Through the Unknown: Jonathan’s Journey.” This portion of the book (almost 200 pages) is the poignant chronicling of the mother’s intense involvement in her son Jonathan’s gradual decline into mental and spiritual chaos, a chaos that included the entire family. Jonathan, the fifth of eight children, was quite gifted intellectually, and developed like most children. In his late teens he began his struggle with what is often described as the most serious mental problem anyone can experience and one of the most difficult to address. As the problem manifested itself, the parents also learned that their son was using marijuana, prompting the question whether the drug may have precipitated the affliction or was his way of trying to medicate himself for the curious mental and spiritual struggles that he felt descending upon him. Mrs. Carr’s journal of her family life enabled her to write an almost day by day account of the parents’ personal interactions with their son, their seeking professional help, and their wise consultation and communication with their pastor and elders.

What made this first part of the book so compelling is that the reader (especially a Christian parent, school-teacher, or elder) cannot help but be hopeful with the family at every sign of improvement, and thus also feel the devastation the parents must have felt at each downturn or disaster, especially when they were helpless to prevent what each night they dreaded might befall them the next day. As the crises increased in frequency and intensity, the Carr family sought all the help they knew to seek, spiritually, medically, and psychologically. Jonathan was prescribed medications. He was frequently hospitalized and then sent home without remedy. He was put under Christian discipline by his church, which was eventually lifted when he repented. His mother—the book’s sub-title is Through A Mother’s Eyes—tells the dramatic and sad story that needs no embellishment. The book is hard to put down.

The end of the story is the death—the tragic, unexpected, sin-caused death—of her son for whom she had given so much of her life.

The second half of the book is called “Love and Courage: Support for Helpers” and is aimed at providing help for others in similar situations. The chapter headings themselves give good understanding not only of Carr’s views of schizophrenia but of her wise approach as a parent: “The Unknown and Unexplainable,” “The Medical Dilemma,” “All in the Family,” “Don’t Burn Out,” “Communicating the Gospel,” and more.

Carr introduces the book with the caveat that it is not a “how-to book” (13), but it serves as such on so many levels. Even her further caveat—“it might very well be a ‘how-not-to’ book”—calls attention to their admitted mistakes in addressing their son’s affliction, but mistakes can be as instructive as positive teaching, and they were. It may not be a manual for diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia, but manuals are not so easy to digest, and this story-teller writes in such a way that the lessons are learned inductively. Even the first half of the book, purportedly ‘only’ the story, is full of good instruction: the therapeutic value of work, the importance of one’s church family, the difference between proper and improper guilt, and especially the vital labor of bringing the Word of God to a son, even when he becomes an adult.

The book breathes of biblical wisdom—explicit biblical wisdom. Carr quotes the Reformed confessions, both the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Unity, and appeals to the Heidelberg Catechism to drive home the importance of constancy in prayer. She points to the history of John Newton helping his friend, the poet William Cowper, whose mental and spiritual suffering may well have led him to suicide but for the help of Newton. The chapter on “Communicating the Gospel” (289-309) was especially helpful.

Broken Pieces is a must read for pastors. The book is good counsel for anyone dealing with a family member who suffers afflictions, and not only schizophrenia. If anyone thinks simplistically about mental problems, Broken Pieces will make them careful with their judgments. Any member of a church will grow in their sympathy for families who struggle with a family member’s mental illness.

Some problems cannot be remedied. Some mental illnesses endure, become worse, and never disappear. Sometimes God does not mend the broken pieces until glory. That’s a good lesson for all Christians to learn.