Award-winning author and poet John Terpstra launched his book, The House with the Parapet Wall at Redeemer on Thursday, February 5. As part of the celebration, he shared with a room full of Redeemer students, faculty and community a reading from this, his fourth work of non-fiction. The genesis of the book is a stationary store in Seattle. There, Terpstra buys a journal, leaves the shop to sit on a park bench, and cracks the pages鈥 stiff spine. He begins writing; writing all about his mother. The house that is The House with the Parapet Wall is Terpstra鈥檚 childhood home, one of the brick and mortar of nineteenth-century houses in Hamilton. The book tells the story of the house and how it collides with the story of the life and death of his mother. 鈥淭hey came simultaneously,鈥 he says, 鈥淚 just wrote and let them come together.鈥 What began as therapy would sprout the roots of his next prose project, the pursuit of which was encouraged by the editor of Hamilton Arts & Letters, a literary journal. His words are, as artist Frances Cockburn puts it, 鈥渞idiculously moving,鈥 and the audience sensed their depth. At a question and answer period after the reading, one man asked the author what he learned about himself throughout this piece鈥檚 creation. Terpstra sort of laughed in referencing the fifth commandment: 鈥淗onour your father and mother.鈥 He is more intentional now than ever in doing so, saying 鈥淚t counts! And I know [my parents] will understand.鈥 That led him to talk about their passing with a striking and refreshing sincerity: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what to do with death, really.鈥 His mother鈥檚 diminishing health caused her to lose abilities at the same rate she鈥檇 gained them as a child; it鈥檚 growing in reverse. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not about the dying but the losing. Nobody wants to leave and miss out on what follows.鈥 His website is titled 鈥淛ohn Terpstra: writer and cabinetmaker,鈥 yet he avoids drawing parallels between the two crafts, calling the concept 鈥渢oo cute.鈥 But the semblance is difficult to overlook. Both entail the shaping of unlikely parts, the drawing from one鈥檚 environs, and the fusion of thought and senses. For example, when asked why he chose prose over poetry for this project, he answered with reference to woodwork: 鈥淚t鈥檚 like doing a whole renovation instead of furniture alteration. It鈥檚 the longer haul.鈥 In closing the evening, Dr. Deborah Bowen praised Terpstra for his physical and spiritual understanding of 鈥渢he passing of things鈥 and for his changing, yet recognizable, voice. She noted that people have had trouble differentiating Terpstra鈥檚 poetry from his prose when read aloud. A selection of John Terpstra鈥檚 books are available at Redeemer鈥檚 Peter Turkstra Library and Redeemer鈥檚 Campus Bookstore.