A deeply religious meditation on how God’s love gives meaning to a woman’s life.
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
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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