Blood: A Memoir by Allison Moorer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Whew--heavy, really heavy. Blood--a symbolic title to Moorer's memoir. It's about her family--her own blood ("I've got your blood running through my veins," she sings in the title song to the album of the same name that came out in 2019)--but it's also about the blood spilt when her father shot & killed her mother, before killing himself. Moorer was fourteen years old. Like I said, heavy, heavy stuff. Moorer spends most of the book looking back at her growing-up years and the fear that she grew up with, as a result of an alcoholic & violent father. Her father was also a buddy country singer-songwriter who never made much headway in the music industry; her mother was also very musical. The family sang a lot together in those growing up years--and it surely paid off in the end, what with both Moorer and her sister, Shelby Lynne, becoming professional country singer-songwriters, who have reaped numerous musical awards in their careers. There's a lot of deep heart-searching in this memoir--a looking back at what happened, attempting to figure out why it happened, and thinking over the various scars & impacts it all left on two young girls who were left all alone. Sad and sorrowful. To see alcohol's ravaging of a family like Moorer's is horrible, it's sickening. Two lives cut short--two lives linked by blood who've struggled and been shamed by the impact for their entire lives. Sin is at the core of it all, of course. Sin & selfishness only leads to shame & sorrow. The shattering impact on others' lives comes through so clearly in these pages. And it won't be cured by meditation or yoga, or more musical or literary awards. It's only possible if the core damage to everyone's heart by sin is acknowledged--and a transformation of hearts takes place by all that has now been made possible through Jesus' revolutionary death & resurrection. In one of the songs on the Blood album, entitled All I Wanted (Thanks Anyway), Moorer sings: "All I wanted was your love..." That summarizes it up pretty succinctly--and, Allison, I just want you to know that God has always loved you & demonstrated His love for you in Jesus' giving up His life on the cross for you, while you (& I & all of us) were yet sinners/broken people.


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