Emissaries

Stories & Reflections

By: Dean Rudoy

Narrated by: Dean William Rudoy

Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

A quiet book for chaotic times....

From high atop a hill in his New Mexico home, Dean Rudoy surveys seven decades of this hard, sweet life.

Psychologist, teacher, activist, son, friend, he offers inspirational stories of indelible encounters with the extraordinary, arising from familiar and uncanny events alike. Growing up with a necessary secret in a small Midwestern town, Rudoy awakens to the private yearnings of others.

Troubled young men in a New York hospital struggle for clarity; children proclaim truths that adults have long forgotten; desert ravens attend an act of atonement; the touch of friends banishes pain; the departed make their presence felt. Small kindnesses offered to him by larger-than-life figures such as Paul Newman, Harry Belafonte, and Edward Kennedy adjoin meaningful gestures from migrant workers, aging parents, and thoughtful young people finding their way. All are emissaries bearing the message that life is lived well, when lived with an open heart.

Resounding throughout these stories is a deep reverence born of the author's conviction that all things in this world are connected in a matrix of meaning. In his lucid, generous, and engaging style, Rudoy has written as much a guide for the perplexed as a memoir. Listening to Emissaries is akin to walking along a country road with an old, reassuring friend.

©2022 Dean William Rudoy (P)2022 Dean William Rudoy

Wise and empathetic memoir

“Love arises of itself, offering safe haven and emancipation from the captivity of fear and anger and sadness. Those distortions of spirit dissolve in its presence. So, too, does ego, it seems. I know this to be true when I am with those on the branches of my ‘other’ family tree - the tree I planted.”

An immensely wise, thoughtful, and empathetic memoir in short stories. The book is arranged thematically touching on subjects as varied as reading to children at a library, caring for elderly parents, confronting a harsh doctor at an ER, encountering wild animals, and working on political campaigns. The author describes his growing up Jewish and secretly gay in the Midwest in the ‘50s and ‘60s, his work as a psychologist, his chosen and found family, the journey to find his place in the New Mexico desert, and many more topics.

I found the stories to be concisely written with so much empathy, respect, and wisdom. I was moved to tears on several occasions, by the deep regard of a student for a teacher and vice versa, the gentle encounter with a rattlesnake, parents honored with dignity, a Holocaust survivor relative lovingly memorialized, and an Autistic boy reached with respect. I have never before read a non-celebrity memoir, but I felt that I learned and grew so much from this book. I cannot recommend it enough. If you enjoy audiobooks, I would definitely advise you listen to it, as the author is a professional voice actor too! What a transformational experience!