It is a unique book of poetry and memoir describing a life's struggle against suicide and depression. His manic adventures provided an escape from depression and counter-acted his suicidal thoughts. The poetry is self-descriptive, written throughout the years to cope with times of mania and depression.Summers describes what he and other contemporizes call memes, traumatic imprints of actual events that cause a nexus of synaptic neurons to congregate closely in the brain structure to alert thinking in advance of thought. Obviously, they are often there for life, feeding habits and ordering emotional signals to the organs of the body, subtly directing our thinking. He writes eloquently of his surrender to religion and drugs (and religion with drugs), throughout his life. Example: "This is normal saline with sodium pentothal, and it will put you into a drowsy sleep state." Yeah right, I thought. That's what the warden tells those poor souls on death row when execution time finally arrives. They know the next moment, the warden will nod his head to the executioner. And that's exactly what I expected...honestly. Weird, the closer I came to my death, the more logical and calm I became. "I want to ask you a few questions," I faintly remember him saying. And then that was all. I gave up the ghost, and I died...I thought. Summers brilliantly intersperses religious icons and other implanted memes throughout this captivating story of struggle and overcoming. "A bold work" - Ken Dahl, author of Honesty: The Final Frontier, and other books
About the Author :
Dr. David P. Summers, the eldest of three siblings, grew up in a strict Pentecostal family. His father was an Assembly of God minister. Instead of following in his father's footsteps as the eldest often does, Dr. Summers rebelled. Now in his later years, he looks back and writes of a life of experiences few can even imagine. His fascinating and deeply personal memoir takes the reader into worlds that few have imagined, much less experienced.
Review :
Dear Dave,
I have just finished, and so much enjoyed your book! Wow, what huge and life-molding experiences you have come through and described so very well. Indeed, all life IS experience no 'right or wrong', but an ever-deepening awareness of was is.... and finding that we are part of It,
whatever we call it, bringing us eventually full circle... home. I was right there with you and had no idea of your globe-trotting career - so different from the piece of your life with which I was familiar. Terrific!
Thank you, Dave, as ever....
Rev. Jane Sorbi, President and Lodge Mother
White Eagle Lodges of the Americas
David Summers, in his new book, "Walking between the Raindrops - Memes of Heaven and Hell", takes us on a cultural journey, showing us a very raw and brutally-honest part of Pentecostal Christianity in America (primarily in the 1950's and 60's). There are parts of our history as members of the human species that are ... uncomfortable, and even a bit odd if we are honest. We are humans, and humans will be humans - in much the same way as ducks will be ducks and dolphins will be dolphins.
So much of American Christianity in those days was about how being human was somehow ... wrong, or perhaps "sinful in the eyes of God Almighty." Several authors have written about these things, but this writer is doing what is long overdue - saying that it is time to talk about what this passing culture has cost so many. Ironically, a life-long pursuit of God that usually ends when the searcher finally finds themselves. This is
a book about overcoming terrible theological thinking from generations past, and finally accepting the beauty that is you.
A bold work. -
Ken Dahl, author of Honesty: The Final Frontier, and other books
I was privileged to read this autobiography by David having been Facebook friends for some years and was immediately drawn into a world long past of naked religious ambition and puritanical legalism. I am a nurse and having lived alongside a Christian Community from 1998 and observed the excesses that extreme religious beliefs create, I was disquieted and not a little angry.
Following David's ups and downs as a child growing up into a man in a well-meaning but narrow environment echoed my own feelings as a child of knowing there was much more to life, but not being able to access it. It has produced in David an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a mind that questions everything. His journey was, in turns, heartbreaking and triumphant as he pursued a successful career, always striving to be accepted and enough.
I recommend this book by my honourable and wise friend and if you read it, you will be educated both with knowledge and spiritually in a world that at once changes unrecognizably, and never changes.
Janice Gale; Chaumouth, UK
