Although the cover and title of Renovating Heaven by Andreas Schroeder (Oolichan Books) give the impression that the book is about the history of Mennonite barn raising in St. Jacobs, Ontario (and indeed the cover photo of men framing a barn-like structure is courtesy of the Mennonite Archives of Ontario in Waterloo), the book is actually a semi-autobiographical novel about Schroeder—sorry, about “Peter Niebuhr”—growing up as a Mennonite in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley.

My family never plowed a field with a dilapidated ’36 Chevy, built a boat out of parts from the dump, milked cows at midnight, won an island in a contest or lost a parent in a car crash, but reading about the Niebuhr family’s experiences gave me the same comforting feeling that I get when I’m back home with my own—even though I read most of it while standing on public transit.

The only thing that took me out of the story was the note on the book jacket that “In more forgiving times, these stories might have been described as largely autobio