A courageous and inspiring memoir.
A doctor of physical therapy and former Marine lieutenant tells the story of her painful struggle with bulimia.
Born the only girl in a family of boys, Larson drew close to her mother, Mary Ann. But when Mary Ann died of cancer, a 10-year-old Larson was suddenly left without her main confidante. She disassociated herself from “girly” behaviors, friends, and activities and immersed herself in sports. She became a star softball pitcher who earned a full scholarship to Villanova, where she also became involved in the Marine Corps ROTC program. A high achiever, Larson also became involved in a program called Fit Forever to help her stop a pattern of “yo-yoing between salads, fruits, and healthy snacks and burgers, pizzas, and desserts, often late at night.” While the program earned the author a second-place finish in a Fit Forever competition and a reputation as the “campus fitness queen,” it also—inadvertently—reinforced the yo-yoing habits she had been trying to eliminate. Once she graduated from Villanova, she continued her military career with the Marines by going through basic training and, later, military engineering school. Though one of the top trainees, Larson still faced a sexual double standard that made her push herself even harder. The demands of her work and of the fitness competitions she entered drove her to regurgitate the unhealthy food she often ate. In Iraq, she became a highly respected Marine platoon leader, but the stress worsened the cycle of bingeing and purging. She eventually resigned and sought treatment for bulimia and became a physical therapist for other “wounded warriors.” By turns honest and heartbreaking, Larson’s book is a celebration of inner strength. It is also a poignant reminder that the mark of a true warrior is not just someone who fights wars, but who also knows how to “ask for help” in times of crisis.
A courageous and inspiring memoir.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-239948-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperOne
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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