Through the Storm: A Book Review

"Tell me again why you're doing this?" my husband asked after I just read to him yet another passage of a book he has absolutely no interest in. Doing what? Reading Through the Storm by Lynne Spears, mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn. The answer to that question goes back to late September, when Thomas Nelson CEO Mike Hyatt announced on his blog that the first 200 bloggers to respond would receive a free copy of the newly released book.In return for the complimentary copy, bloggers would agree to read and review the book on their blogs. It was a project that involved a free book, reading, and writing. How could I resist? I have to admit that as someone, too, who works in Christian publishing, I'm curious about how campaigns like this one work for big publishers like Nelson and how we might be able to adapt a similar strategy at our own house. So it just seemed like a good thing to do.

Honestly, I have very little interest in Britney Spears. I'm familiar with only two of her songs, and I know something of the drama of her life from the past couple of years because when I check my AOL email account, the headlines and pictures flash before me. I first learned about Britney Spears from my daughter Katie, who was probably about junior high age the first and last time we discussed Britney together. I think there was probably a sound byte on TV, and I asked my little girl if she knew anything about this teenager who had become such a sensation. "I don't like her, Mom," Katie said. "She's not nice."

So this was my introduction to Britney Spears. And I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't just a little bit curious to find out what Lynne had to say. In the introduction to the book, which Lynne wrote with Grand Rapids writer Lorilee Craker, she tells the reader: "It's the story of one simple, Southern woman whose family got caught in a tornado called fame and the aftermath. It's who I am, warts and all, with some true confessions that took a long time to get up the nerve to discuss." She doesn't share any "dirt" on her kids--and she doesn't--and her other purpose is to let us regular people peek into the lives of the rich and famous for a reality check, so that we can see that the other half doesn't necessarily have it made.

I knew that already.

We get the background on Lynne, who grew up in rural Louisiana, the daughter of a WWII veteran/dairy farmer and the lovely war bride that he brought home from London after the war. There really isn't anything remarkable about Lynne's upbringing that would foreshadow the chaos of her future famous life. She married the local basketball star, Jamie Spears, who had already been married. Her parents weren't happy with her choice, and she ended up eloping. Perhaps the future apples didn't fall far from the tree?

Lynne became pregnant almost immediately with Brian, the oldest of the Spears siblings and probably the least well known. It was in her accounting of the events surrounding her pregnancy with Brian that Lynne first gives a hint of what is to come in her discussion of any of the problems that occur down the road. In the grand scheme of things, what she describes seems to be a minor event, and yet I found her description interesting and telling.

Her brother had been working on the farm and was badly injured. The pregnant Lynne was the one who drove her bleeding, moaning brother to the emergency room. It was raining, the roads were slick, and as Lynne rounded a curve, an oncoming car was coming in the left lane. She could also see two boys riding their bikes in the road, and she sensed that she would hit one of them, that it would be impossible not to: "One boy managed to get his bike out of the way, but his friend, a twelve-year-old boy whose house was right by the scene of the accident, was hit." The boy died.

What I find interesting is the passivity of Lynne's description, and this reactionary thinking seems to be her approach as her marriage ends in divorce, Britney's career spirals out of control, Britney emotionally and psychologically falls apart, and teenager Jamie Lynn gets pregnant. In the margin of the book where I was reading, I wrote, "Did she hit him?" I can't imagine the horror of being responsible--certainly accidentally--for a child's death. And that seems to be what has happened here. But the odd sentence construction--the boy was hit--seems to suggest that even after all these years, Lynne still can't bring herself to say, "I hit him."

And life for Lynne and her family goes on, and the book does with it. Jamie starts drinking, and his alcoholism, of course, has a bad effect on the family and the marriage. One of the big questions I had coming into this book was how in the world Britney--or any child--becomes a rock star. I especially anticipated the chapter, "Why Did I Say Yes?" And the answer is very simple. Lynne tells us she said yes because "I wanted to help my daughter make her dream come true." And here I don't see Lynne as that different from other parents I see around me who drive their children from one sports event to another, from one music lesson to another, activity after activity until family life becomes a distant memory--because it makes them happy. But I think that if my little girl had come to me and said, "Mom, I want to be a pop star like Madonna or Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston," I probably would have said, "Sweetie, you're a smart girl. Why don't you go to college, get a degree, and then we'll revisit the whole pop star thing." Or I might have sat her down and had a big long talk with her about the emptiness of fame, money, and celebrity and how that particular goal doesn't line up well with my hopes of her becoming a faithful Christian woman.

But Lynne chose another option: entering Britney in local competitions and taking her to try out for the Mickey Mouse Club and Star Search. And it sounds like while Lynne was helping pursue Britney's dream, her oldest teenage son was motherless at home with his alcoholic father, and I'm guessing her lengthy absences probably didn't do much to buttress their failing marriage.

It's quite believable to me that Lynne Spears has not been a stage mom, one of the misconceptions that she seeks to clear up in her memoir. It's definitely not her style. Again, it sounds like she reacts rather than taking control, and this led to bad situation after bad situation. How did 17-year-old Britney end up scantily clad in Victoria's Secret type underwear on the cover of Rolling Stone? The photographer showed up at the house to take pictures, and before anybody knew it, he was in Britney's bedroom with the door shut. Lynne figured he was in there taking pictures of Britney with her stuffed animals and posters, but when the agent finally insisted on going in, they all found Britney sitting on her bed in a bra and hot pants. Remember--this is Rolling Stone magazine, not Seventeen.

And on it goes. Lynne is similarly shocked and devastated years later when teenager Jamie Lynn comes home pregnant. One more episode showed for me what seems to be the cluelessness of Lynne Spears. Around the time of Britney's famous breakdown, a nasty character named Sam Lutfi appeared out of nowhere. His first encounter with the family was when he called Lynne to tell her that Britney's ex, Kevin, and Britney's assistant were conspiring and had planted drugs at Britney's house. In a panic, Lynne and the assistant search the house but find no drugs. A while later, when Sam calls again, instead of hanging up, Lynne tells him that they found no drugs. Then Sam offers her a job selling cubic zirconia jewelry on TV. When that falls through for ambiguous reasons, she still considers getting involved with him when he tells her he has a shoe endorsement deal for her daughter, Jamie Lynn. That one, not surprisingly, falls through as well. Lynne and a friend still remain connected with this character when he tells her that he can connect them with an agent for the friend's son, which--surprise!--doesn't work out. Eventually Sam gets his tendrils around Britney, and it ends up taking a court order to get him out of her life. I 'll just let this incident speak for itself.

There are some nice moments. I'm moved by Lynne's relationship with her sister, Sandra, who died of cancer about a year before the book released. They obviously had a loving relationship, and Lynne writes of her sister in a way that is tender and sweet. And I was glad to see at the end of the book that Lynne talks about the things that she wishes she had done differently, mistakes she personally feels she has made. One of the things she wishes she had done differently was she wishes she had taught her children the importance of living a daily, consistent Christian life style.

The book is interesting in the sense that People magazine is interesting to me for a brief time while I'm getting my hair highlighted and am sitting under the dryer. The voice of Lynne comes through, and so congratulations to Ms. Craker for not overstepping as a co-writer. At times the chronology of events gets lost in Lynne's ranbling reflections, and I wonder what order events actually happened in. The history student in me would like a few more dates. It seems that there is an assumption on the part of the writers that all of us have followed Britney's career and the lives of the Spears so closely that we know exactly what they are talking about at any point with little or no explanation.

While I think there are valuable things we as a culture could learn from this family's experience, I don't think we'll learn it from reading this book. I really didn't need to read a cautionary tale to realize the emptiness of the modern celebrity lifestyle. But the problems are far deeper than Lynne realizes, more than an aggressive force of papparazzi or greedy people who take advantage of the vulnerability of celebs. So I'll keep waiting for that celebrity memoir that will tell us that we'd all be better off serving others with our talents rather than seeking the momentary adulation and shallow successes that seem to be the goal of so many in twenty-first-century American culture.