In this debut memoir, a Mormon convert discusses being a foster parent to dozens of children and ultimately adopting six with special needs.
Christensen begins her narrative by recounting the 2015 emergency helicoptering of her foster baby Kyrie from their home state of Oklahoma to a Cincinnati Children’s Hospital that was better equipped to handle the infant’s challenging health care needs; the child was born with Pierre Robin syndrome, a disorder that causes facial and airway abnormalities. The author then proceeds to comment on other key milestones of her life, particularly during five years in which she converted to the Mormon faith, decided to get cochlear implants, battled ovarian cancer, dealt with her parents’ deaths, got married, and committed to foster parenting. Christensen and her husband, Nathan, fostered some 70 children during this period and ending up adopting six with special needs, including Kyrie. Christensen focuses on the baby’s grueling, touch-and-go surgeries (during which the author believed a chaplain’s soft humming helped keep the child alive), her own multiple miscarriages, her shock over her mother’s death in a car accident, and many custody hearings and adoption processes. She concludes the book with her joy over having a family of six children and the fact that their adoptions were both sanctioned by the secular court and celebrated in the ceremonies of her beloved Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The author has crafted a powerful memoir that skillfully unspools its dramatic anecdotes from Kyrie’s airlift onward, effectively showcasing Christensen’s awe-inspiring commitment to demonstrating her faith—most significantly, through her parenting. Her use of flashback and flash-forward techniques makes the chronology of her life unclear at times, though, and the account of her troubled early adulthood before her spiritual rebirth is underdeveloped. Still, she ultimately engages readers with her musing narrative, which is admirably infused with sympathy for the struggling, often drug-addicted parents who gave up their children for adoption.
A humble and humbling saga of spirituality and service.Pub Date: July 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9977588-0-1
Page Count: 312
Publisher: HWC Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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