Don’t be surprised if tears of relief flood your eyes after finishing any number of these death-dealing stories.
Wonderfully suspenseful tales of air-sea rescue from Walker (Nights of Ice, 1997, etc.), a veteran chronicler of such acts of heroism.
Although the meat of this story is the rescue of fishermen from the sunken vessel La Conte, Walker sets the stage with a few chapters of rescue operations from the early years—a mere 20 years back—when chopper pilots and rescue swimmers counted prayer as their most valuable tool. Helicopters went down then in scary numbers, but this was the gig the Coast Guardsmen had signed on for, and it is because of their daring that what is practiced today as operational tactics were learned in the first place. Walker paints the history, geography, and citizenry of Alaskan fishing towns with great warmth and evocativeness, and then turns his attention to extreme weather in the Gulf of Alaska. It’s a triple-digit universe: waves over 100 feet, winds over 100 miles per hour, squall lines hundreds of miles in length. Unless you are in the maw of such a hellacious storm, the next most realistic thing is for Walker to describe it to you, especially a night storm, with rogue monster “pitch-black waves moving out of the pitch-black night,” then your boat slipping into the greasy depths of the trough, the air so thick with sea spray it is impossible to breathe. The La Conte never had any business in such weather, and she went down fast with no lifeboat, throwing the 5-man crew into the 40-degree drink in the middle of the night. Tethered together, they were found by a Coast Guard helicopter, but wound up spending more than seven hours in the water, through three separate helicopter missions. At one point, a helicopter was literally dodging waves, hovering at 80 feet to drop the rescue basket only to find a 100-foot monster coming down on them. Unfathomably, three of the fishermen were rescued.
Don’t be surprised if tears of relief flood your eyes after finishing any number of these death-dealing stories.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26971-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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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