A skillfully written, thought-provoking account that positively reconsiders an antagonist as an important teacher.
A divorced woman’s perceptions of her controlling ex-husband shift radically when she establishes a new bond with him following his death in this debut memoir.
In 1985, Mickelwait returned to California after working as a tour guide in Rome. Setting up as a freelance marketing writer, she found her social life waning before meeting her future husband, an attorney named Steve, at a friend’s wedding. Described by others as looking like “an actor playing a politician,” Steve had plenty of charisma. The author gradually capitulated to his charms and they began dating. The couple went on to marry and have two children before cracks started to show in their relationship. Steve’s personality began to change. He became reliant on drugs for chronic back pain and started growing marijuana and collecting guns and knives. Mickelwait later discovered that Steve was having an affair with Mitzi, their close friend and realtor. Following the couple’s divorce, Steve was diagnosed with colon cancer and later died. The author was left to deal with her ex-husband’s $1.5 million debt because her name was still on the banks’ loan records. Mickelwait’s journey to forgiveness began after seeking spiritual guidance and reconnecting with Steve through a psychic. This is emotionally frank writing in which the author is unafraid to share even her darkest feelings, such as “I thought of all the times I’d wished Steve dead,” after learning of his cancer diagnosis. The memoir’s structure makes for compelling reading, beginning with Steve’s funeral, where, despite sharing 26 years together, Mickelwait admits her “eyes were dry.” The author then backtracks to recall the arc of their relationship, explaining the period of understanding and healing that occurred after his death. Mickelwait is also buoyantly descriptive in these pages. Recalling her “spiritual life coach,” she writes: “Like my own personal Yoda, Arjuna would sit cross-legged in the big striped chair and dispense pithy advice.” Skeptics will struggle to accept the fact that the author communicated with Steve after his death, and cynical readers may find her psychic’s conclusion that “everything he did to you, he did for you” difficult to swallow. Still, those who believe in parapsychology will enjoy this smartly conceived book that tracks a major shift in personal perspective made possible through spiritual counseling.
A skillfully written, thought-provoking account that positively reconsiders an antagonist as an important teacher.Pub Date: June 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64742-030-7
Page Count: 344
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
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
© Copyright 2026 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.
