An engaging story of an intercontinental spiritual journey.
In this debut memoir, a woman embraces a lifestyle she never imagined for herself and discovers the power of vulnerability and faith.
When Hill lost her beloved husband, Paul, to illness six months after their wedding day, her life came to a standstill. As an accomplished academic, her life didn’t lose all purpose, but her lack of faith and connection to God left her feeling like she had no way to move forward from the heartbreaking loss. As time passed after the funeral, she found herself unable to cope. She underwent a series of failed attempts to find answers; she visited a psychic reader, then went through periods of isolation and depression, finally ending up on a therapist’s couch. She eventually decided to take six months’ leave from work, and after receiving an invitation from her cousin, she embarked on a journey to Scotland, to a spiritual community called the Findhorn Foundation. Hill found that members of the community were all doing intense self-discovery work. Although she was apprehensive, she explored the community’s offerings, from body therapy to group sharing sessions to “Angel Meditation.” Hill eventually opened up to a group about her apprehensions and fears of intimacy and made an emotional connection. Soon she was able to return home and began to find closure regarding Paul’s death. But burying her husband’s ashes brought on a whole new wave of grief and pain, and Hill returned to the Findhorn Foundation the following summer. This time, she opened herself up to the foundation’s teachings and placed her trust in the community members and leaders. Through this process, Hill discovered a new relationship with God and human connection through song, dance and movement. She faced an important question: Could she live a new life of emotional honesty outside the Findhorn Foundation, without the support of the community’s leaders? The author weaves humor into her narrative, juxtaposing her grief with the sometimes-quirky personalities and events at the Findhorn Foundation. Each of the book’s chapters is tightly written, taking the reader on a rewarding journey through her healing process. Overall, Hill delivers a moving memoir of her transformation from skepticism to spirituality and from grief to joyful living.
An engaging story of an intercontinental spiritual journey.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0986612756
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Incite Press
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
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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