A tragic yet uplifting account of a young man’s spiritual growth despite adversity.
The inspiring true story of a beloved son taken too soon and the life he packed into his 33 years.
As devout Christians, the Chapmans don’t believe in coincidences but rather in miracles, many of which are detailed in this biographical tribute to Chad Chapman. His father, Gary, notes the many similarities between his son, born just two days shy of Christmas, and Jesus’ own challenges and triumphs from birth to death as he searched for, and found, meaning in tragedy. From the moment of his birth, Chad symbolized the miracle of birth and a difficult lesson that “[c]hildren belong to God and are given as gifts to Parents.” Chad’s family soon perceived him as a vehicle for miracles, whether he was healed suddenly and unexpectedly from a malaria-driven coma or rescued from social and spiritual difficulties in high school. Skilled in construction and eventually a successful builder, Chad married Lauren, a woman he chased from Toronto all the way to England. Together, they had two boys, Jonas and Keelan, and involved themselves extensively in the local church. But an intense stomachache in his mid-20s turned out to be cancer of the appendix that had gone undiagnosed and spread to more of his body. Burdened with a dire prognosis, Chad struggled to maintain his faith in God and a cheery disposition as life slipped away from him. He died at the same age that Jesus was crucified, and in this, and in many other ways, Chad’s father took comfort that his son carried out God’s wishes. Filled with photographs and memories, Chad’s story is one of determination, tenacity and faith. As told by his father, this account isn’t only of Chad’s accomplishments and strength of character throughout his short life; it’s also about the lessons he left behind for his family to learn. Chad’s work ethic, honesty and commitment to God inspired each of his siblings as well as his parents, and this is the legacy he left behind. By documenting Chad’s short but full life, his father allows for more than just sadness in the aftermath of his loss. Celebrating life and its challenges, the poignant collection of anecdotes and lessons paints a picture of an admirable and courageous family finding strength in the harshest of challenges.
A tragic yet uplifting account of a young man’s spiritual growth despite adversity.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499010466
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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