A firsthand account of dealing with cancer that would benefit from a tighter focus but remains touching in its positivity.
This debut book chronicles a woman’s 11-year battle with cancer, told through emails to her prayer circle.
In November 2004, Rodrigue and her husband, Kenny, moved to Ocala, Florida, with their three children: Nicole, 18; Marc, 16; and Garrett, 11. After a year of unpacking and looking for a new job, Rodrigue went in for a routine doctor visit only to learn that she had peritoneal cancer. Soon after, she began sending out emails to her “prayer warrior” circle of friends, family, and fellow members of her church. The emails detail her numerous trips to cancer centers in larger cities, where she learned of Tumor Boards, CA-125 levels, and the devastating effects of chemotherapy. She also took the time to fill in these updates with personal observations and small moments of faith and reassurance she found in the halls of the hospitals. Rodrigue learned more about herself while sharing the Psalms and other Bible verses that helped her cope and strengthened her own faith: “God’s Grace is enough. It is everything! I am more sure of His promises because of this cancer.” In 2007, she found herself notifying the prayer warriors that she was “amazed” it had been two and a half years since her surgery, but a second diagnosis led her to confront the “why” questions with God. In 2015, Kenny updated the prayer warriors on her final days in home hospice care, and the book concludes with eulogies written by her children. It is impossible to not be moved by these final pages, and Rodrigue’s unrelenting positivity and total faith shine through many of the preceding emails. But the choice to present her journey exclusively through the emails she and Kenny wrote does hold back the potential emotional impact of her struggle. The emails focus on the details and the day-to-day information important to friends and close relatives at the time. Some editing to truly highlight the moments in which Rodrigue’s attitude and beliefs—the aspects most important to the reader—take center stage would make her story even more powerful.
A firsthand account of dealing with cancer that would benefit from a tighter focus but remains touching in its positivity.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-6516-8
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
