by Marriott Cole ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 20, 2012
Candid, cheerful proselytizing, seamlessly intertwined with heartbreaking slices of life.
One woman’s account of how her spirituality has enriched and guided her, presented to mentor other Christians on their own paths.
Cole opens her debut memoir by revealing that she’s a child of rape who has recently tracked down her biological mother while continuing to seek out those whose violence caused her conception—to offer her forgiveness. This is only the first of many stories the bighearted Cole shares as she illustrates how each trial she’s met as a wife, mother, widow, teacher and Christian has helped her to shape her faith in Jesus Christ. While optimistic in tone, Cole frankly relives the most heart-wrenching of her challenges, from a troubled childhood to her husband’s violent murder to the suicide of her son, addressing the pain of each experience while emphasizing the role God has played in shepherding her through these difficulties. She describes the many real-life miracles she’s witnessed, from religious premonitions to faith healing, that have shaped her faith and encouraged her to share it with others. The memoir uses a colloquial tone; this conversational style has its quirks, however, bouncing between the modest and the sensational, adding to the informal nature of the narrative. Conflict isn’t heavily emphasized, and chapters are all similarly constructed—each features an anecdote or parable, punctuated with a lesson or Godly intervention, and often includes a passage of Scripture. And though the memoir is an evangelizing text, even skeptics and the nonreligious will find little fault in Cole’s refreshing message of inclusion. The book contains a few appendices, including some comics supporting creationist views that add little to the narrative and don’t match the author’s friendly, approachable style.
Candid, cheerful proselytizing, seamlessly intertwined with heartbreaking slices of life.Pub Date: July 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1462401888
Page Count: 272
Publisher: InspiringVoices
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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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