From an award-winning essayist and acclaimed poet comes this radiant, observant, and warmly funny memoir about childhood, family, and small-town life. Carla Funk grew up in a place of logging trucks and God, pellet guns and parables. Every Sunday, she sat with her mother and brother in the same pew at the Mennonite church while her dad stayed home with his cigarettes and a fridge full of whiskey. In these tender, humorous stories, Funk stitches together the wondrous and the mundane: making snow angels and carrying sacks of potatoes, tossing pig bladders like footballs, and vying for the Christmas pageant spotlight. Part ode to childhood, part love letter to rural life, Every Little Scrap and Wonder offers an original take on the memories, stories, and traditions we all carry within ourselves, whether we planned to or not.

Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging toward the flames. Coming of age in a remote valley town–a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands–she knows
her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies’ sewing circle. In her world, the body is hidden in shame, the lines between the sexes are strictly drawn, and the wrong thoughts can tip you over into sin. But increasingly, she
wants to push the limits: of her family, her religion, and the little town that can’t contain her desires for much longer.

In poignant and hilarious stories, Funk chronicles her 1980s adolescence in all its awkward glory: from summer Bible camp to forbidden school dances, from questionable makeovers to hair-raising pranks. Through it all runs the longing to
make her life into a new and different story, as she asks the questions we all must face about where we come from and who we want to be.

At once an affectionate coming-of-age tale and a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, Mennonite Valley Girl is about the places we all long to escape–even if they are the same places that define us.