An economically written testimony that will appeal to Christians seeking to reconcile their faith with loss.
A Christian testimony about a family that faced years of medical challenges.
Born in the late 1960s in rural Kentucky, debut author Lawson grew up watching her parents’ strong work ethic as they operated a local funeral home and ambulance service. She was raised a Christian, but she writes that she was often “not too far from God, but not especially close either….my walk was more in line with other things, like food and books.” After overcoming a lifelong struggle with her weight and self-esteem issues, and surviving a short-lived marriage, Lawson believed that she was finally on track in her life—and then her mother was diagnosed with renal failure. She returned home to help her mom, whom she describes as “ever the ‘steel magnolia.’ ” But after years of daily dialysis, the doctors insisted that a kidney transplant was the only way forward. Lawson was discovered to be a match, and she gave everything she could to try and save the life of the woman who’d done so much for her, but it turned out to be only the beginning of numerous complications. Other family tragedies followed, and Lawson underwent her own struggle with infertility. The crux of her story is her second marriage to a supportive, loving man and her eventual acceptance and understanding of why God would allow such difficulties to befall her family. With her husband’s encouragement, she decided to share her testimony and the story of her resilient faith. Lawson’s concise prose condenses years of her life into a neat, compact narrative that still has room for big, emotional moments. Although she summarizes most events in a few sentences, she also takes care to elaborate painful ones, including her many prayers and her mother’s heartbreaking final gestures, which makes each complication feel more urgent and powerful. Overall, the book follows a familiar narrative for religious memoirs and testimonials, and there are no groundbreaking insights into pain, loss, or the reluctant acceptance of God’s plan. However, Christian readers will appreciate her brevity in sharing her spiritual struggle and eventual revelations.
An economically written testimony that will appeal to Christians seeking to reconcile their faith with loss.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-0244-6
Page Count: 76
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doyle offers another lucid, inspiring chronicle of female empowerment and the rewards of self-awareness and renewal.
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. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
