A moving testament to the will and single-mindedness of one woman determined to help those in need.
An uplifting story of one woman's compassionate aid to wounded children.
Almost 15 years ago, part-time singer-songwriter Montanti was battling severe depression and panic attacks brought on by the deaths of her mother, grandmother and first love. Unable to write or perform her music, she was forced out of this "very dark hole" by a friend who asked her to help with a fundraiser for war-torn Bosnia. Seeing pictures of children who had lost limbs during the war triggered an emotional response, allowing Montanti "to hear a faint melody.” From there, she embarked on her own crusade to aid these wounded children. She quit her full-time job and started the Global Medical Relief Fund, a nonprofit organization run from Montanti's walk-in closet that would bring wounded children to the United States to receive free prosthetics. Aided primarily by the Shriners, Montanti opened her home, life and heart to these children, giving hope to the victims and their families. Despite the difficulties in obtaining documentation needed by Homeland Security and reams of red tape to access exit visas from foreign countries, Montanti has successfully helped more than 150 children from around the world. Bosnians, Haitians, Afghanis and Iraqis have all shared her home, with music and laughter serving as the universal languages. When asked why she has done so much for these children, the author replies, "how could I not?”—she believes "there are actions we can all take in our daily lives to help others in need and create a global family."
A moving testament to the will and single-mindedness of one woman determined to help those in need.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-525-95295-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
