Book Review: The Small-Town Pagan’s Survival Guide – How to Thrive in Any Community

by Faelin Wolf

by Bronwen Forbes, 2011
ISBN: 9789738726229

How many of you out there live in small towns where you don’t have access to any pagan events, groups, or shops? Do you know anyone else who is pagan that you can connect with? Once you find them, how do you connect with them? Where do you to connect when you don’t know anyone else? How do you tell others about your religion and/or spirituality? Bronwen Forbes has some ideas for you!

This is a great book for everyone, whether you live in a small town or not, whether you’re experienced or inexperienced in your path, and by Faelin Wolf Book Review The Pagan Edge whether you’re a solitary practitioner or prefer to practice with others. Forbes offers advice on how and when to come out of the broom closet, how to approach meeting other pagans in your area, how to meet your pagan material needs (think altars!) in a small town, how to connect with others online, and how to start your own groups or covens. She speaks from experience, having lived in both small towns and urban areas and having started several groups and covens over the years. She also supports her suggestions with advice from others. She collected surveys from other pagans living in small towns and offers their ideas as well as her own on various topics.

I appreciated Forbes’ approach to the topics in this book. They’ve come out of her experiences as well as others’ experiences living in small towns or making the transition to small towns. She doesn’t offer her ideas as the “right” or “only” way to do things, but offers them as they are, suggestions. When she doesn’t know or isn’t sure, she will admit it and offer the information she has, from her research or her survey respondents. You know what else I like about The Small-Town Pagan’s Survival Guide? It’s realistic. Forbes doesn’t sugar-coat things: she offers the pros and cons and lets the reader make his/her own choices. She acknowledges the good things about starting your own coven, but also acknowledges the challenges. I love her down to earth attitude.

This is definitely worth the read. Join Bronwen at her Yahoo Group smalltownpagans to continue the conversation, ask questions, or ask for advice.

Biography

Bronwen Forbes has been active in various Pagan communities across the country since 1985 as a coven leader, community officer, and festival coordinator. She has taught workshops at Pagan Pride festivals, gatherings, bookstores, conferences and, most recently, at Circle Sanctuary’s 2009 Beltane festival. Her first book, Make Merry in Step and Song, is a collection of the English folk dances, songs, and plays she grew up with in Berea, Kentucky. She swears that watching a live performance of the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance at age nine is what marked her as Pagan. Her second book, Mint Juleps, Mud Pie and MacBeth, is a comic novel about a mishap-driven musical production of Shakespeare’s cursed play and the Wiccan assistant stage manager who has to solve the problem. Bronwen currently lives in Kansas with her family, which includes five dogs and five cats. Balance is all.

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