The rare family scrapbook that isn’t boring to the outsider.
A mother’s collected memories reveal her remarkable life in this work of nonfiction.
Powers (Organic for Health, 2007) brought home her moribund mother Grace to spend her last living days surrounded by the family she adored. Grace had led a long, full life, but her children could not possibly have imagined just how full until after she passes away, and Powers discovered boxes full of her mother’s carefully recorded memories that told the unexpectedly compelling story of Grace’s secret life. While the candid family photographs, legal documents and authentic newspaper clippings help illuminate the reality behind Powers’ sentimental portrait of her mother, “All else,” Powers writes in the foreword, “is as close to true accounts as I could make them.” That leaves Powers’ few elegant pages of introductory prose and, more compellingly, her mother’s journal—which constitutes the bulk of the short book—open to questions of verisimilitude. So be it; despite the liberties Powers may have taken, it’s an enthralling read. Correspondence with a church reveals Grace was adopted at a young age, never able to discover the identity of her biological parents. After the death of her adoptive mother and abuse at the hands of her adoptive stepmother, Grace managed to grow into a sensible, loving wife and mother in a small Ohio town. She and her husband strove for an honest living in the wake of the Great Depression until witnessing a neighbor’s gruesome murder cracked any sense of normalcy. And then came war. Patriotism runs deep throughout Grace’s journal; reprinted letters from World War II offer a frank depiction of life during wartime, both for the soldiers facing combat and for civilians, like Grace, at home sacrificing for their country. Grace’s patriotic sacrifice launches the book’s most stunning revelation—she infiltrated Cold War communist factions as an undercover spy for the FBI. Often the journal entries, particularly those containing the more incredible admissions, read like summaries of profound events rather than a dutiful narration, as if the journal—either because of Grace as writer or Powers as editor—was meant only as an introduction to the deeper story. Perhaps Grace intended to tell her daughter the story herself one day, with the detail it deserves. Now this book will suffice.
The rare family scrapbook that isn’t boring to the outsider.Pub Date: March 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456729561
Page Count: 140
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
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
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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