A sensitive portrayal of a family tragedy needlessly escalated by the insensitive bureaucracy of insurance companies.
The story of the plane crash that tragically broke apart one family and set up some disturbingly complex insurance and liability issues.
In his nonfiction debut, magazine journalist Fowler pieces together the compelling story of Minnesota native Toby Pearson and his unfortunate ties to the crash of a noncommercial airplane that went down in the vast woodlands near Lake Superior. That small aircraft was carrying Pearson’s wife and two daughters. Although his wife died in the crash, his daughters miraculously survived, albeit with life-changing burn injuries and trauma that would burden them the rest of their lives. As the bills for his daughters’ injuries mounted, Pearson was faced with the possibility of his insurance company not paying out for his daughters’ injuries, and he became embroiled in a labyrinthine mess of a legal situation that can be traced all the way back to the pilot of the downed plane having initially given fraudulent insurance information, a misstep that had the potential to make Pearson’s already difficult situation a lot worse. What’s more, now Pearson faced a significant battle with a multibillion-dollar insurance company. Fowler does a meticulous job of getting readers acquainted with Pearson and his family and providing a solid account of their lives before and after the crash. He manages to solidify the personal angle of the Pearsons’ harrowing story while also using this as an entry point into a larger investigation into both lax aviation safety standards in the private/noncommercial field and questions of who is liable for what damage according to the insurance industry. The author’s maintenance of this balance between the more delicate intimacies of Toby Pearson’s post-crash family life and the more reportorial and investigative side of the book works well.
A sensitive portrayal of a family tragedy needlessly escalated by the insensitive bureaucracy of insurance companies.Pub Date: April 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-02622-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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