by Harold S. Rhodes ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 27, 2015
A moving memoir that’s particularly timely given the current health care debate in the United States.
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A heart-rending debut nonfiction account of a couple’s struggles with insurance companies as they tried to recover from a catastrophic accident.
In January 2002, a massive tanker-trailer hit Marcia Rhodes’ car from behind, and she suffered a welter of crippling injuries, including irreparable spinal cord damage that left her a paraplegic. Her husband, Harold, in this debut memoir, walks readers through their harrowing story, including the protracted aftermath of Marcia’s medical struggles and the couple’s fight with two insurance companies that were reluctant to reach financial settlements. As the book’s subtitle suggests, the author focuses on their tug of war with these companies and their indefatigable efforts to compel them to pay what they desperately needed to cover onerous medical costs. Rhodes’ depiction of insurance carriers’ cynical money-saving strategies serves as a grim reminder of how toxic the mix of commerce and health care can be. He also illustrates, with painstaking thoroughness, the judicial system’s lamentable limitations and the ballooning costs of health care. Additionally, the couple had to contend with a criminal trial against the driver of the truck, who was charged with negligence. Still, the heart of the book concerns the couple’s battle to manage the emotional fallout of a transformative disaster. For example, after the author asked his wife to politely thank him for his caregiving efforts, he realized the depths of her depression: “She felt that given the way her life was, I was not being reasonable to have these expectations. She was utterly depressed, so just getting through the day was all I could expect. She was perfectly correct. I am not supposed to nag her; I am supposed to love her as she is.” The account of the legal contests can be excruciatingly detailed, and the book’s overall chronological structure, which reads like a diary, can be exhausting. Nevertheless, readers will find this a sad but inspiring story.
Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2015
ISBN: 978-1499543285
Page Count: 374
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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