Book of the Week for November 13, 2007

Here if You Need Me: A True Story.
© 2007 by Kate Braestup.
Braestrup’s inspirational memoir reveals her extraordinary and unusual role as chaplain of the Maine Warden Service, a position she took on after the death of her husband, a Maine State Trooper.

A widowed mother of four young children, Braestrup seeks a way to fulfill her husband’s goal of completing seminary school, assuage her overwhelming grief, and lend comfort and solace to others afflicted by challenging or tragic circumstances.
After completing training at Bangor Theological Seminary and becoming ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister, Braestrup signs on with the Warden Service and begins a career accompanying search-and-rescue teams on missions to find lost hikers and children, recover bodies, and solve the mysteries of missing people. Her job is unique in law enforcement, she notes, “I’m not needed in any urgent, practical sense. For 120 and its 125 years, the Maine Warden Service managed quite well without a chaplain…I don’t make the difference between finding and not finding a body, between order and chaos, life and death.”

Nevertheless, story after story affirms the need and importance people have for her special type of comfort in times of trauma. She’s there to console the family of a young suicide victim, to wait with parents as the woods are searched for their six-year-old daughter, to accompany her colleagues on a late-night trip to inform a family of a terrible loss.

For the wardens she works with, Braestrup’s presence at the scene of an accident or death serves as a source of strength for them as they pursue their difficult work, but it also frees them to concentrate on their tasks. “Perhaps more importantly, Braestrup says,“ My uniformed presence signifies a human and humane understanding on the part of the wardens…that the body in the woods or in the water is not just a practical problems, but a matter of tremendous spiritual significance for those most intimately involved…as a reverend, I can express our significance.”
Often Braestrup’s tales of search and rescue end happily, with a found child, a safe father, a lost and tired but living brother—but regardless of whether she’s present for celebration or sorrow, she creates a profound and moving document of her role and its power for the people who need her.