A heartfelt memoir of devotion and determination.
The story of a family’s triumph after a medical catastrophe.
In her moving nonfiction debut, Crigler recounts her brother Jason’s arduous recovery from a burst blood vessel in his brain, a recovery that involved his wife, parents and, most intimately, the author herself. Punctuated by brief diary entries and recollections of anxious dreams, Crigler chronicles Jason’s day-by-day challenges as he suffered from the consequences of the bleed—loss of the ability to move and speak—and ensuing complications: meningitis, seizures, coma and a host of infections. After three months of repeated setbacks, Jason seemed imprisoned in his body: “[a]drift on a lifeboat in the most remote sea.” As they monitored his care, the family was frustrated by confusing and mixed messages about his prognosis for recovery. They were also frustrated by their health insurance, which “questioned every treatment and refused many of them” with the goal “to pay as little money as possible.” Depending on what they hoped would be humane and competent care, the family came to the “harsh realization that Jason’s care was driven not by what would help him but by cost.” Cowed, at first, by his physicians, the family defied their advice and brought Jason to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, renowned for treating brain injury. There, he made enough progress to be discharged. Crigler and Jason shared an apartment for several months while he worked with physical therapists and on his own to recapture basic skills. With the author as round-the-clock caregiver, other family members pitched in. Exhaustion and stress gave way, at times, to emotional tensions. More than a year later, Jason gained enough independence to share the apartment with his wife and infant daughter; after several more years, which included eye and mouth surgery, proton beam radiation to his brain and much exercise, he was able to resume his career as a musician.
A heartfelt memoir of devotion and determination.Pub Date: April 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8032-5414-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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
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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