An inspiring and moving account of a caring family.
A former communications professor and clinical psychologist takes readers on a journey of death, grief, and acceptance in this memoir.
Hocker (co-author: Interpersonal Conflict, 2013) grew up in a close-knit family that moved frequently due to her father’s work as a minister. During the tumultuous decades of the 1950s to ’70s, his support of civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War often made his tenures at conservative churches brief. Although the author’s parents did not approve of her two divorces from men they had grown to love, they supported her choices. The death of her brother Ed’s new wife from lung cancer in 2002 was distressing but proved how caring the Hockers were as a unit. The discovery of multiple lesions on the brain of the author’s sister, Janice, in 2004 was devastating to the whole family but especially to Hocker, who had always had a close relationship with her younger sibling. As the author floundered in her sorrow, her mother faced a heart-rending cancer diagnosis. Hocker—again—left her practice, husband, and Montana home to share her mother’s final weeks. The author and Ed’s attempts to help their father adjust to life as a widower were unsuccessful, causing the clan to lose a fourth member in just over two years. Designated as the family archivist (due to interest, not professional training) even before the cluster of tragedies, Hocker sorted through belongings, stored at her parents’ cabin “Shalom,” close to an old ghost town and cemetery called Tincup, as she attempted to overcome her grief. The structure of this volume is somewhat confusing, as the beginning provides only slightly relevant information about the ending of the author’s first marriage. But as the tale transitions to the core of the memoir, the absorbing love stories—while heartbreaking—should carry readers along. Hocker skillfully presents the narrative of dying, managing to make it quite beautiful. A long interlude concerning family history and genealogy, while intriguing, disturbs the flow of the account and is better suited to a different narrative. But overall, the author, perhaps drawing on her professional background, makes a disturbing chain of events touching and ultimately uplifting. Despite its unusual structure and inherent sadness, this book is well worth reading.
An inspiring and moving account of a caring family.Pub Date: May 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-63152-341-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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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