An inspiring story of enduring physical and mental challenges to raise awareness of an important issue.
One woman's story of indomitable courage while rowing across the Atlantic Ocean.
Sickened by the knowledge that there are nearly 30 million men, women and children worldwide being used as sex slaves, Immonen was determined to do something to raise awareness of this modern-day slave trade. So she and four other women entered the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge, a rowing race from the Canary Islands to Barbados. Intent on becoming the fastest all-female team, the author and her fellow rowers worked in two-hour shifts around the clock, battling wind, waves, seasickness and ugly sores brought on by prolonged exposure to the salt water. They learned to combat weariness, boredom, claustrophobia and anger as they rowed their way through 3,000 nautical miles and developed deep bonds as only such endurance can create. Blending detailed elements of life on board with that of her childhood, Immonen reflects on the inner struggles she faced throughout her life, starting with her abusive father and submissive mother, who suffered several traumatic emotional breakdowns and was placed on suicide watch just as Immonen began training for the race. What she learned about herself and her parents as she continued to push her body beyond normal limits is a testament to the human desires to love and forgive. "I often describe the row as the hardest but best thing I've ever done,” writes the author, who co-wrote the book with Borlase. "All of us can't row an ocean, but all of us can do something. And doing something starts by opening our eyes to the world around us and looking out for something that needs to change”—a philosophy to which many readers should relate.
An inspiring story of enduring physical and mental challenges to raise awareness of an important issue.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-529-10147-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: W Publishing/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2014
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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
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