Mothertrucker
Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America
By: Amy Butcher
“This story is about women—about the way we bend, and love and listen, the way we forgive, forgive, forgive.”
I love the subtitle of this book.
Amy Butcher, the author, has come to meet Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe, an Instagram star and the only female trucker to traverse the most dangerous road in America.
“The James W. Dalton Highway is the most dangerous road in America, 414 miles of gravel and occasional pavement that extends north from Fairbanks, Alaska, to the industrial town of Deadhorse and the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. More drivers die on that road annually than anywhere else in our America, in no small part because its miles are subjected to the worst of Mother Nature.”
Amy and Joy find kinship in their shared experiences of domestic abuse.
In the isolation of their trek north, Amy finds Joy— the person— and Joy helps Amy find herself again, and together they chase the loneliness away.
“Joy gave me a sense of hope. She demonstrated every day the way a woman could put herself fearlessly out into the world, and I envied that strength, that courage.”
Joy was a major influence to the people of Alaska. And sadly, we say ‘was’ because just months after Amy visited Joy, Joy’s rig went off the road, crashing below. She died instantly. She left behind a host of people in her wake who experienced her kindness and her sacrifice.
“This, perhaps, was Joy’s greatest legacy: a network of people she was helping who are now helping one another… Joy was a woman who spent her days placing little antennae feelers out into the world, feeling for pain or suffering, feeling for the people who needed her.”
I think we all find ourselves on lonely roads, looking for joy. We all experience suffering of some kind and we wonder if there is anything better for us. Is this all there is? Where is the hope and where is the joy?
While I think Amy ultimately misses the mark, there is true Joy and Hope on our lonely roads and I’ll share that later in this review.
I will say, this book’s title, subtitle, cover, and description is a bit misleading, as other reviewers have commented as well.
I thought I would be reading a story that focuses on Joy, her life, her fame, the road she spends her life on. And we definitely get some of that, but I would say Amy has used Joy’s story and influence in her own life as a vehicle to tell her[ Amy’s] own story more than Joy’s.
I was disappointed in that respect.
That seems unfair to Amy. Everyone has a story worth sharing and we are better for listening, but I wish they would have marketed it differently. It felt like a bait-and-switch. And I think most people will pick up this book and be dissatisfied with the Joy-to-Amy ratio.
There are three major themes in this book: Abuse, Faith, and Politics.
Some reviewers have commented on the ‘religiousness’ of this book and I’m a bit surprised by that. Amy is searching spiritually, to be sure, but she is wrestling with the dissonance of what she imagines faith should be and what she has experienced firsthand. And I don’t think she ends up settling anywhere or advocating for Christianity. If anything, I would imagine she is still an agnostic.
Or she worships Joy.
Amy stood in awe and reverence of Joy, holding her on a pedestal and viewing her as her savior. Joy’s sudden death should have reminded Amy that our hope is not in humanity. As amazing and influential and wise and loving as people can be— no mortal being can save any other mortal being.
Anyway, I will reflect on each major theme and offer my own commentary.
Feel free to skip what you’re not interested in. Near the end are a bunch of interesting facts!
Abuse
Amy Butcher is a college professor who teaches classes on feminism.
“[My students] wrote powerful essays about our culture, about the many ways violence against women was rampant, systemic, and, ultimately, all about control.”
“Abuse is not deterred by social class, by economic or financial privilege, by sexual orientation or race. These things undoubtedly influence how easy it is to leave— and to be successful in that endeavor, to be supported and safe and even believed— but they are in no way a barrier to abuse.”
Reading this book, it is clear that Amy has a pretty polarized view of men. Granted, she has experienced abuse from more than one to taint her perspective.
Abuse is real and I appreciate Amy sharing her story and helping people understand how abuse is not just physical, it’s mental, verbal, and spiritual, and it should not happen. Women are indeed vulnerable to the lust and power trips of men who take advantage.
But she makes some pretty strong and pointed statements that gave me pause.
“Every year we [women] are stalked and slaughtered, beaten and battered, snuffed out, slain. I knew this but didn’t really know it until the spring that I met Joy, when the man I loved more than any other— a man who was good-natured, funny, kind— stood in my downstairs hallway screaming, looming over me, lunatic.”
“It is more dangerous to be a woman in Alaska than anywhere else in America. This is a state that routinely ranks highest among reported cases of domestic violence, and that violence is largely perpetuated against Indigenous Alaskan women… 5700 Native American women have been reported missing nationwide since 2016 alone that that number is likely an undercount.”
“It feels like a particularly prescriptive, conciliatory feminine mantra: we are uniquely strengthened by our pain, which the world is all too eager to dole out on us.”
“The news depicted an outside world intent on hurting and killing women, and it made aloneness something to fear.”
“We need to prioritize the lives of women.”
Her commentary throughout the book elevated the violence against women and painted a picture that the world is out to harm women at a higher rate than men. Women, of all the things we can be, are most often victims.
But when I do my own research, I don’t really find this picture.
79% of homicide victims are male.
Males make up 52.6% of missing person reports.
Women have higher percentages of domestic violence in almost every state, but men are not that far behind, sometimes only a few percentage points lower.
Alaska is not the highest ranked for domestic violence cases. Alaska is ranked 6th (which is still high). I’m not sure what her statistic of missing Native Americans is supposed to mean, but from what I can find, Native Americans are not the highest ranked race of abuse victims. White and Black are, respectively. I didn’t do enough research to determine the percentage of each race the numbers were.
Of course, this isn’t the complete picture. Whether or not women vastly outnumber men as victims, I think there is something to be said about women suffering in unique ways that men (usually) don’t. Women feel a different kind of fear and vulnerability. I’m guessing a higher percentage of female homicides involve sexual assault.
I guess my discomfort is that there has been a very big cultural shift against men. I do not want to ignore women and their suffering. I don’t want to hinder efforts to reduce and eliminate domestic violence. But I believe there has to be a way to do that where we are not collectively demoting all men to scum-of-the-earth status.
When we look at the violence in the world. Men are not immune from its effects. They matter too.
And not all men are abusers. Statistics on victims don’t necessarily give us a clear pictures of the perpetrators. We can’t make blanket statements about ‘men’ wanting to harm women, being violent, being dominant.
If we look at the world, and we look at the violence, we see people who want to hurt people. We see selfishness and people out to follow their own truths and do whatever makes them happy, at any cost.
Unfortunately, suffering is not unique to any one group of people.
To pivot to a different aspect of this subject… this was a relevant remark.
Amy quotes Joy talking about a therapist’s advice for her marriage and Amy’s takeaway from their conversation was this:
“I can tell by the way Joy responds that she subscribes to Dr. Laura’s checklist: do this and this and this, and a man will love you forever.”
This statement sticks out to me because I recently read the book Talking Back to Purity Culture by Rachel Joy Welcher. At least in the Christian culture, there has been harmful communication about the relationship between men and women and how to have a ‘successful’ or ‘biblical’ marriage. Welcher’s book may be a good resource to counter Dr. Laura’s supposed advice.
Amy quotes Joy speaking of her husband (can’t remember which one) and why she decided to drive truck.
“He believed a woman shouldn’t work, should just be having babies and raising babies, and maybe that’s okay for some, but me? I couldn’t stand that quiet, all that sitting inside all day. What kind of life is that? For a woman, for anyone?”
I’ll give Joy the benefit of the doubt and say that she wasn’t deliberately trying to put down stay-at-home moms. Some women just prefer to work outside the home, and that’s fine.
But if she thinks staying at home raising kids is ‘quiet’ or entails ‘sitting inside all day’ she is sorely mistaken! And I’ve done a lot of reflecting on this because this discussion is common in circles of women and prominent in the whole mom-guilt spectrum of the female brain. ‘What kind of life’ is raising kids at home? A pretty darn important and fulfilling one!
Some women need or want to work, but there is nothing trivial, boring, meaningless, or pitiable about being home with kids.
Read Eve in Exile or Radical Womanhood or A(typical) Woman if you want to process that a little bit more.
One last important comment:
“I am a woman with plenty of regrets— plenty of missteps and wrongdoings— the biggest mistake I’ve ever made was allowing a man to decide if I was worthy, and then believing him when he said I wasn’t.”
This is a true and monumental saying. If we are determining our worth based on other people’s opinions or treatment of us, we will never amount to what we hope to. Amy finally stopped believing her worth was tied to her boyfriend’s words and behavior.
But she didn’t follow that thread of thought to its end.
We have worth because we are created in the very image of God. He gives us our worth. His love and his grace is unconditional. We will find no earthly equivalent. There is no other explanation that is as satisfying and meaningful as the freedom and value and love we find in our Creator.
Faith
That is a good segue to the faith theme of this book.
Amy is an agnostic and started dating Dave, a Christian. However when they became sexually active after Dave had said he didn’t want to, he felt the shame of his choices and took out his shame and guilt on Amy.
“The man I love is also Christian. He’s been trying to scream his faith into me.”
“The faith, the rules, the scripture might change, but the idea is always, more or less, the same: Follow this faith or else.”
“I wanted to see faith as good.”
I can see how this would put her off to Christianity. He was not walking the walk of the Bible he claimed to believe. And what’s more, he was inflicting emotional and spiritual abuse on Amy. Who would want to follow a faith that promotes that?
“Dave’s Bible was one in which women were mostly objects, their bodies instruments: tools of labor, punishment, or temptation. Women washed the feet of Jesus, or women gave birth without sex to the son of God, or women were prostitutes who sometimes helped men by hiding them in walls. The Biblical women were always subservient. They did not teach classes on contemporary feminism.”
Dave talked about “how much holier the women were who served, how selfless, how sanctified.”
There are many who hold the Bible in their hands and then use it to harm others. However, the Bible is pro-people. And it is very pro-woman. I think many people have a misconception of how the Bible treats women.
But if you read the Bible you won’t find what she’s claiming. There are many books that attest to this. Michael J. Kruger’s book, Surviving Religion 101 discusses the idea that the Bible oppresses women. He says that when we look closely, “we find a vision for men and women having equal dignity and worth— a vision that would have been radical and counter cultural in the context of the ancient world.”
The Greco-Roman world promoted female infanticide and “females probably composed only about 1/3 of the population in pagan circles” whereas “they made up about 2/3 of Christian circles.” Females found dignity and value and protection in the church. We see the way Jesus treated women— he talked to them, he healed them, he traveled with them and he taught them. This was countercultural.
Women are honored in Scripture. Jesus first appeared to a woman after his resurrection. During that time women were not considered reliable eyewitnesses. But we see all throughout Scripture women playing major roles in God’s plans.
Of course there are lots of terrifying interpretations of the submission passages in the New Testament, but those who hear the word ‘submit’ and run away have not done their due diligence in looking at Scripture. Submission is never forced. And wives are called submit to their own husbands (not all men) in the context of the husbands being commanded to love their wives sacrificially. There are no grounds for men to claim dominance, to silence their wives, or to demean them in any way. There is simply no evidence for this in Scripture.
Dave did not share the truth with Amy. He shared his own sin and guilt in a destructive and harmful way that the Bible does not condone.
As far as being selfless and serving… that is not just a call to women. It is a call to all who desire to follow Jesus. Jesus was the ultimate example of being selfless. He came to serve and give his life for the very people who killed him. Dave did not portray the full truth. We honor God when we obey, when we sacrifice of ourselves for others. But this is not a task relegated to one gender.
I mentioned before that it seemed like Amy viewed Joy as her savior. Here are somethings she said:
“Not for the first time, I begin to imagine Joy as God.”
“Is it God or is it Joy that makes me feel like I am capable, that I am in control, stable, strong? The way I feel inside Joy’s presence is how others articulate their belief in God.”
“‘What would Joy do? WWJD,’ I say.”
“Joy insisted it was God’s miracle that brought the two of us together, but I don’t believe in miracles. I believe she did this. I did this. We.”
Joy was the catalyst for Amy to start making changes in her life and to recognize the abuse for what it was. There is no denying the impact Joy’s words and love had on Amy. There is nothing wrong with that.
But every time Joy mentioned God, Amy was ready to provide another explanation. I think she’s searching in the sense that she desires to understand what she sees in the world and to find hope for a way out of it. But she’s not searching in the sense that she seems to refuse to consider the possibility that God does exist.
Maybe she needs to read the book ‘Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn’t.’
“I’ve spent so much of my life searching for a faith that aligns with my lived experience, and of course I haven’t found it, because I’ve been looking in all the wrong places. I have been looking for God in men. It’s no wonder I can’t relate to a faith or an ideology that holds at its center a figure who resembles all the men who’ve ever hurt me.”
I hope she isn’t saying that Jesus resembles all the men who’ve ever hurt her. Men cannot save us. Women cannot save us. But Jesus can. If she truly looks at who Jesus is, she will not see her abusers. She will see truth, life, love, grace, patience, gentleness, forbearance, self-control, peace.
Dane Ortlund writes about the heart of Christ in his book Gentle and Lowly.
Nabeel Quereshi went on a quest to disprove Jesus as God and in fact found himself face to face with his Savior. He recounts his questions and struggles in his book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus.
She says,
“For a moment, I feel willing to concede that maybe there is a God, and maybe He did create this place, but maybe we aren’t the point, the heroes in this story. Maybe we are simply postscript, because God knew his creation was worth a witness: the stars and earth and mountains, the emptiness of this expanse, how it’s the lack of human spoil that makes this place so gorgeous.”
She still hasn’t fully grasped it, but she is encountering God’s creation in a real way. In a way we are told in Scripture about. “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse… they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” (Rom 1:20, 25)
She has seen His glory. And she’s right. We are not the heroes in this story. The lives we live are not about us. We are made for more than worshiping ourselves or even awesome people like Joy.
One last thought on this section.
There is much talk about suffering. How should we look at our suffering? Do we despair of it? Do we glorify it? Is it proof of God’s wrath on us for messing up?
“I also know how dangerous it can be to interpret everything as God’s reward or God’s punishment.”
“Everywhere I look, the world is an open wound.”
“Suffering is simply suffering. It’s dangerous to glorify.”
Suffering is no easy or simply matter. But the Bible is very vocal about suffering. Christians are told to expect it.
But not all suffering is the same.
I found Eric Ortlund’s book Suffering Wisely and Well to be very insightful as we look at the pain and hardship in our lives that we don’t understand.
Politics
I won’t spend a lot of time on this section. We’ve probably all had enough politics by now. It seems to find it’s way in every book these days.
I’m including this just to acknowledge that it takes up space in the book.
The politics in this book revolve around the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the oil industry at large and it’s affect on the environment, indigenous people, and poor communities.
Some of her thoughts:
“These life-threatening burdens are the result of systemic oppression,” the NAACP reports, “perpetuated by the traditional energy industry, which exposes communities to health, economic and social hazards.”
“The industries their jobs support— and the industry that gives Joy’s life so much meaning— is antithetical not only to Native politics, but to Native cultures, Native lives. I am grateful for Joy… but I’ve begun to feel guilty to be on this highway… to further exacerbate a wound through a land that is not ours.”
“The very fact of American life— a life I enjoy, take pleasure from— insists on a hierarchy of profit that leaves the marginalized in ruin: communities disrupted, food and shelter resources depleted, landscapes decimated.”
“Time and time again, the industrialization of America relies on tracing the troubled fault lines of systemic racism, ecological ruin, and poverty. Whole communities are upended, ways of living disrupted, and lands and bodies poisoned while wealthy Americans just get wealthier. I look at Joy, who looks at me. We are complicit in all of it.”
I honestly don’t know enough about the environment and the economy to argue either way. It’s definitely something to consider, but oil seems pretty necessary to our economy and as a country being self-sufficient in oil production seems like a pretty big win.
I think we have to think about these things but when anyone starts using the word systemic oppression and trying to attach guilt to everyone, I’m sniffing out some tracks of critical theory and I’m hesitant to jump on the bandwagon of Amy’s ideas.
Of course we have to mention her Donald Trump comments.
“That Donald Trump is a hero among these people— truckers, oil field workers, Alaskans more generally— comes as no surprise. This is a place that uniquely benefits from Republican policies, a region where the majority values financial profits more than the consequences of exploitation: of land, of people, of policy. The towns that exist up here— and indeed, the industries— exist solely for the purpose of economic gain”
The only thing I’m going to say about this is:
Is anyone else tired of a person’s character and morality being predicated on the sole fact of their vote in 2016 and 2020? Is it really that simple? I don’t know how many times authors have slipped things in their books to this affect. People trying to understand and explain away how a decent person could support Trump so that they can justify not demonizing them in their book like they would want to. When did the whole ‘don’t judge’ bit start excluding supposed Trump supporters from this protection? I think we all know people are far more than their ballots.
Fun Facts
Welcome to the more fun part of this review! Alaska is a fascinating place and I’m happy to share these facts with you.
Trans-Alaska Pipeline is 800 miles, with over 579 specialty animal migration crossings, 34 major rivers, three mountain ranges, and numerous earthquake fault lines, before reaching Valdez and being shipped throughout the country.
Prudhoe Bay is the largest oil field in North America and produces 1 million barrels of oil per day.
James W. Dalton Highway is one of the deadliest/dangerous roads in the world. Another one is Skipper’s Canyon in New Zealand, and I’ve been on it. I was on a tour not driving, but it was quite the experience!
Prudhoe Bay is a dry area— no alcohol. It’s too risky to have available when truckers can’t drive under the influence.
Average salary of truckers in Alaska is $50-75,000.
Polor bears are known to reach speeds faster than Usain Bolt.
Polor bears and grizzlies are so plentiful in some parts of this state that ecologists estimate there is one bear for every square mile.
Moose outnumber bears nearly three to one, wounding 5-10 people annually
Sun dogs are common in Alaska. They supposedly got their name from the myth that Zeus walked his dogs across the sky and the two false suns on either side of the sun were the dogs.
The Gwich’in are the native people to Northern Alaska and are caribou are the prominent part of their life and identity.
The only way to be able to jump into the Arctice Ocean in Prudhoe Bay is by tour during certain times. It’s around $70 per person and you have to pass a background check because of domestic terrorism security reasons.
Conclusion
Overall I was disappointed in the book because it wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted more information about Joy and Alaska and life as a female trucker on the most dangerous road.
I wanted pictures. I had to google so much. I wish she had included pictures of what they saw and of Joy if that’s really the purpose of writing this book.
I’m not saying avoid this book. I just think you need to know what you’re going into from the start.
Of the three main themes I talked about in my review (Abuse, Faith, Politics), abuse was definitely the most prominent theme and was a transparent look at ways women have been hurt by men.
If this book speaks to you in terms of domestic violence and abuse, then I would also recommend the book Is it Abuse?: A Biblical Guide to Identifying Domestic Abuse and Helping Victims. The church has acknowledged that there have been far too many mishandled cases of abuse and we need to do a better job of listening and helping victims.
If you feel like you’re driving down that lonely road looking for joy and hope, then let Amy’s quest push you to go further than she did (not physically because you’d be at the North Pole) but ask harder questions and do the work of finding the answers, however uncomfortable.
Unlike what Joy says, we are not meant to be alone. And the only thing that can truly satisfy the emptiness and longing we feel in our hearts is Jesus Christ. Every human being, however wise and good-intentioned, will let us down.
Search for Him and you will find Him.
**Received a copy via Amazon First Reads**
Share this book review to your social media!