An engaging remembrance of moving through tragedy and grief with love.
A young couple’s lives are forever changed by a fatal disease in this memoir.
McCann, the author of this touching remembrance, was 15 years old in 1990 and staying at her family’s Vermont summer cabin when she met and fell in love with handsome, witty, and popular 17-year-old Curtis Vance. Their romance was on-again, off-again as Vance’s attention strayed to another girl, leaving the ever faithful author crushed by his inability to commit. Later, in their mid-20s, the two finally became a committed couple and moved in together. Soon afterward, Vance noticed some weakness and other odd physical symptoms. Before long, they found out that members of his family, dating back to the early 1800s, had been ravaged by a rarely discussed but aggressive form of Lou Gehrig’s disease called familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The story then chronicles Curtis’ maturation into a person who was unafraid to love deeply. The theme running throughout the story is that the couple was, in the author’s words, “learning to live while preparing to die.” As the 25-year-old Vance gradually lost his ability to walk and talk, members of the community where he grew up in Danville, Vermont, held weekly healing circles and showed the couple their love. Eventually the pair was forced to make a hard decision when it became clear that Curtis’ ability to breathe would inevitably fail. Over the course of this memoir, the author makes her account vivid with exquisite detail even though the events of the story happened more than 20 years ago. The intervening decades allowed the author to put the traumatic period into mature perspective, and her book effectively allows readers to see how the author continued on with her own life after a long period of grief: “The darkness that enveloped me for so long now only occasionally becomes greater than its forever state of brewing. I make the conscious choice to keep it at bay by concentrating on the sliver of light.” The prose throughout is eloquent but never flashy, allowing the story to shine through.
An engaging remembrance of moving through tragedy and grief with love.Pub Date: May 26, 2022
ISBN: 978-1954493261
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Green Heart Living Press
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A far-reaching, mostly persuasive guide that seeks to change how people approach inner challenges.
Ion and Irimia’s self-help book presents seven principles that can alter readers’ lives.
Many people face internal roadblocks that keep them from succeeding. While therapy remains a common treatment option, it can take years to make progress. Fast Transformation Protocols, the method advocated in Ion and Irimia’s guide, is the opposite, only requiring a minor time commitment. The seed for FTP was Ion’s first company, a recruitment agency for corporations in Transylvania, Romania. On a trip with a colleague named Sara, Ion freed the woman from the perception of abandonment, making Sara understand that benefits exist in even the most negative situations. FTP primarily operates by asking many “weird questions” and utilizing seven universal laws: those of duality, reflection, transformation, synchronicity, eristic (i.e., argumentative) escalation, order, and fractals. The laws mingle concepts from science, philosophy, and psychology. Just a few of the numerous examples the authors discuss regarding the law of duality alone include the Babylonians’ concept of celestial cycles; the Chinese version, yin and yang; and, in biology, the balance of cell birth with cell death. Another inspiration is Carl Jung’s exploration of coincidences (the law of synchronicity) and archetypes (the law of fractals). Added to the mix is a helping of spirituality. The authors ask readers, when they’re contemplating life challenges, to consider sacred contracts, an idea that “before birth, your soul carefully chooses the exact context and circumstances it will incarnate into.” The ambitious guide is written in Ion’s voice; she’s a sensitive presence who seems to genuinely aspire to help others. She recalls that as a child, “I pulled my emotions inward and packed them tightly inside me, like delicate things wrapped in newspaper.” Yet this delicacy is balanced by a love of organization and rationality, reflected in this well-structured and mostly convincing book. Intriguing case studies demonstrate how the laws the authors discuss apply to real situations. But some readers will question the success rate. Using one of the seven universal laws is always shown as succeeding, although perhaps not immediately.
A far-reaching, mostly persuasive guide that seeks to change how people approach inner challenges.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2025
ISBN: 9798993098203
Page Count: 313
Publisher: Inspired Life Circle LLC
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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