""What do you want for your children?"" Faced with that question, Virginia Owens searches deeply for an honest answer. Faith, she decides, is what she wants to pass on. But how do we transmit our faith to the next generation in a world that has lost its regard for the family? Owens shows in vivid detail how we can live in all the ups and downs of family life and still impart our faith as a true fulfillment, not merely as a cultural appendage. In a beautiful, sensitive, and heartwarming manner, Virginia Stem Owens evokes many memories as she recalls the joys and sorrows of her own large and sometimes difficult and eccentric Texas clan, as well as the experiences of others, from Russian novelists to Texas bank robbers. A Feast of Families is a rich and rewarding repast. ""What a lovely book it is. Virginia Stem Owens is one of those rare Christians who doesn't draw legalistic lines around any part of her faith but lives in that world of openness and vulnerability that Christ called us to live in and that so very few people are willing to risk. In her accounting of her own particulars she strikes that note of universality which will make her book reach a wide audience."" --Madeleine L'Engle Virginia Stem Owens has written over fifteen books that include three mysteries and nonfiction on a wide range of topics from media to metaphysics. Her memoir of her grandfather's last years won the Texas Institute of Letters prize for best nonfiction book in 1990. Living Next Door to the Death House, written with her husband, David, takes readers inside the prison culture that pervades her hometown, Huntsville, Texas.