An arresting remembrance, as brave as the life it describes.
A woman chronicles her triumph over youthful trauma to become a wildly successful entrepreneur.
Debut author Kennedy was born in Welland—a small town in Ontario—in 1959, burdened by disadvantages. Her family was poor and her father, an alcoholic addicted to gambling, sexually abused her for years. The author was a fiercely independent youngster, “fearless and curious.” But despite academic talent, she dropped out of school when she was 14 years old. Yet even as a young girl, she was “infatuated with money,” had the “spirit of an entrepreneur,” and seemed destined to stake her own claim in the business world. After years of wandering shiftlessly from job to job, she experienced an auspicious confluence of events that changed her life. Kennedy suffered serious injuries in a horrific car crash and, as a result, received a $10,000 insurance payout. In addition, she saw a business owner discuss “body sugaring,” a process whereby unwanted hair is removed, on a television show. She contacted the owners of Alexandria Body Sugaring, and went into business with them, the first step on a path to founding her own global company, Alexandria Professional, now the “the gold standard in the field.” The author details, with admirably intimate and gripping candor, the arc of her professional life as well as her efforts to master her personal demons and forge an optimistic yet pragmatic spirituality that she learned from adversity: “It showed me that every time I apply my trust and belief in the Universe, in God, in my archangels—whatever it is that sustains us—and in myself, everything works out.” Kennedy’s life is captivatingly eventful, and her indefatigable perseverance remains uplifting. She truly lives by the motto “My favorite direction is onward.” Aspiring entrepreneurs should find not only moral encouragement in her tale, but also concrete lessons about business management. Still, the most intriguing element of the book is the author’s personal introspection—she openhandedly scours her life for meaning and purpose, and pieces together a spiritual worldview, partly the consequence of her experience of an inner voice that steers her toward safety and prosperity. Her reflections regarding her father are especially poignant. After he quit drinking—he faithfully attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings—he turned over a new leaf, and never assaulted her again. Amazingly, she eventually came to trust him again, even around her own young daughters. Forgiveness did not come so easily, and Kennedy’s depiction of her struggles to find it is profound and moving: “Forgiveness is like anything you do. When you practice it, it becomes easier. Forgiveness starts with understanding, with seeing and feeling the other person’s reality. When you practice that empathy, you understand more; when you understand more, it’s easier to apply the next time; when it’s easier to apply, it simply becomes a part of you.” Written in informally anecdotal prose, the author’s memoir is both dramatically absorbing and wise.
An arresting remembrance, as brave as the life it describes.Pub Date: March 25, 2019
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 524
Publisher: LNV Publishing Co.
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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