A Place Called Home

This inspirational title features host Ralph Martin introducing the stories of 7 people, including himself, who overcame despair and disillusionment through their faith in Christ. Immaculate production values and truly interesting interviews make A Place Called Home a program which will appeal to a wider audience than the subject matter suggests. Two of the interviewees are well-known: Noel Paul Stookey (Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary) and former Nixon administration White House official Charles Colson. The four others are Kathy Reminga (who suffered an ugly divorce), Tom Stempky (who broke his father's ribs in a fight before leaving for Vietnam, and then took years to work up the courage to ask for forgiveness), Catrina Ganey (raised by her mother in the inner city after her father left), and Bob Winter, a gay man who died of AIDS (Winter is played by James Bergwall). Ultimately, these people tell human stories that many of us can either sympathize or empathize with. My only complaint with the film was that some of the mood vignettes were rather stagey (for example, while music plays in the background, Kathy Reminga sits at a table looking like despair, itself, while one or two tears roll down her cheek). Personally, I hate that kind of contrived crap; fortunately, it only happens rarely in the show. At the end of the program, Martin offers an unabashed invitation to viewers to accept Christ as their personal savior. Some librarians are going to find this bothersome--it didn't really bother me, since nobody's asking for money, and no one says you're going straight to hell if you don't pick up that King James right away. Highly recommended. (See A DOWNRIGHT ACCOUNT: THE LIFE AND WORK OF JOHN HENRY NEWMAN for availability.)