A woman explores how different principles of Christianity have enabled her to overcome adversity.
More a collection of parables and personal anecdotes than a traditional memoir, this debut book explores the author’s path to a loving relationship with God. Wiegold has overcome tremendous struggles throughout her life. The first chapter, which contains the bulk of the autobiographical narrative, recounts the author’s childhood in Florida. Born into a broken family plagued by poverty and alcoholism, Wiegold spent her early years severely neglected. She started working at a club at age 13; she married at 17 and suffered four miscarriages. Yet life took a dramatic turn when Wiegold met her second husband, Mike, who introduced her to the teachings of Christ. The rest of the book explores how Christianity rejuvenated the author’s life and relationships, filling her with a sense of love and purpose; there’s also a great deal of Scripture and Bible study. Breaking a friend’s teacup becomes a reflection on forgiveness; learning to ride a dirt bike by releasing the gas becomes a lesson on accepting the Word of God by simply letting go. Wiegold often writes directly to women, with a particular focus on those who come from a troubled background. Her analysis of the story from the book of Luke, where a sinful woman washes Jesus’ feet, is a standout section explaining how the Christian faith approaches different degrees of sinfulness. But the highlight of the book, and definitely its strongest throughline, remains the rekindling of Wiegold’s relationship with her mother. Forgiveness proves essential as the author begins to care for her mother in old age; the two ultimately reconcile by fostering a mutual love of God. Indeed, if Wiegold teaches one thing, it is the importance of practicing forgiveness. The secret to forgiveness? “If you are a Christian and there is something or someone that God is asking you to forgive, just do it.” Throughout, the author writes from a place of deep, sincere faith. The book should speak to people, especially women, who are equally devout.
A deeply religious meditation on how God’s love gives meaning to a woman’s life.Pub Date: Dec. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0042-8
Page Count: 172
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR
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Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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More life reflections from the bestselling author on themes of societal captivity and the catharsis of personal freedom.
In her third book, Doyle (Love Warrior, 2016, etc.) begins with a life-changing event. “Four years ago,” she writes, “married to the father of my three children, I fell in love with a woman.” That woman, Abby Wambach, would become her wife. Emblematically arranged into three sections—“Caged,” “Keys,” “Freedom”—the narrative offers, among other elements, vignettes about the soulful author’s girlhood, when she was bulimic and felt like a zoo animal, a “caged girl made for wide-open skies.” She followed the path that seemed right and appropriate based on her Catholic upbringing and adolescent conditioning. After a downward spiral into “drinking, drugging, and purging,” Doyle found sobriety and the authentic self she’d been suppressing. Still, there was trouble: Straining an already troubled marriage was her husband’s infidelity, which eventually led to life-altering choices and the discovery of a love she’d never experienced before. Throughout the book, Doyle remains open and candid, whether she’s admitting to rigging a high school homecoming court election or denouncing the doting perfectionism of “cream cheese parenting,” which is about “giving your children the best of everything.” The author’s fears and concerns are often mirrored by real-world issues: gender roles and bias, white privilege, racism, and religion-fueled homophobia and hypocrisy. Some stories merely skim the surface of larger issues, but Doyle revisits them in later sections and digs deeper, using friends and familial references to personify their impact on her life, both past and present. Shorter pieces, some only a page in length, manage to effectively translate an emotional gut punch, as when Doyle’s therapist called her blooming extramarital lesbian love a “dangerous distraction.” Ultimately, the narrative is an in-depth look at a courageous woman eager to share the wealth of her experiences by embracing vulnerability and reclaiming her inner strength and resiliency.
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.Pub Date: March 10, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0125-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | SELF-HELP
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The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
Categories: GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY
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