During the past several days, I've "read" John Grogan's memoir "The Longest Trip Home" by listening to the unabridged CD version (read by the author) on journeys through Columbia County during harvest time.

For reasons that I don't fully grasp -- maybe professional, maybe more personal than I'd like to admit -- I'm attracted to books in which the authors tell their stories about growing up in a particular faith, then embracing a different faith, or none at all, in adulthood.

There's Randall Balmer, who almost literally was a "boy next door" to me when we grew up in Des Moines, writing about his spiritual journey in light of his evangelical preacher father's high expectations for him (at age 6, Randy got a toy pulpit for Christmas), in "Growing Pains: Learning to Love My Father's Faith."

There's Mark Curtis Anderson, an acquaintance from my Twin Cities years, whose "Jesus Sound Explosion" chronicles how he struggled to find, and ultimately lost, the faith of his fundamentalist parents, amid the backbeat of what his mother called "jazzy music" (in other words, any song that wasn't a hymn or inspirational chorus).

And now we have Grogan -- a newspaper columnist and author of a best-selling book about a bad dog, "Marley and Me" -- talking about being a Cradle Catholic, with a capital C for both.

Grogan is the youngest of four children of Richard and Ruth, parents who were such devout Catholics, all three of their sons were given the middle name of Joseph, and their daughter was baptized Mary Josephine.

They were so Catholic, they took family vacations to holy sites of saints, including one where all six Grogans climbed 28 steps on their knees, praying a Hail Mary on each step.

Catholic school taught by Sisters of St. Felix, priests coming over for dinner, first confession, being an altar server -- it's all in Grogan's childhood, and in his book.

Also in the book: Grogan's powerful love and respect for his parents.

If faith truly is "caught, not taught," then why didn't Grogan catch a contagious case of Catholicism?

Why did he, and all three of his siblings, stop going to Mass in adulthood, and even forget the words of the Lord's Prayer?

There are so many parents who strive and sacrifice to instill in their children a particular way of understanding God, the universe and other people. For them, "The Longest Trip Home" has to be one of the scariest books ever written.

That's partly because Grogan isn't 100 percent clear on what led him away from the faith of his parents.

Was it the turbulence and violence of the 1960s, which hit close to his Detroit-area home? Was it meeting, courting and marrying a fellow journalist named Jenny? Was it a need to be himself, and not a carbon copy of his father? Was it all of these, or none?

One of Grogan's nun-teachers might say, "It's a mystery."

Because it is.

What's clear from Grogan's story is that, as vital as it is for believers to bring up their children in whatever faith they hold, those children eventually will have to work out their own relationship with God.

Or not.

Jerde's e-mail address is lyncjerde@juno.com.