An inspiring story of mettle and optimism in the face of overwhelming challenges.
A man recounts his struggles to overcome the debilitating effects of a severe brain bleed.
On July 18, 1999, debut author Buff finished a round of golf. He returned to the clubhouse and collapsed. He was diagnosed with “a malformation of veins and arteries that are sometimes weak in places and can burst.” He underwent two microscopic brain surgeries, the first to remove the pooled blood around his cerebellum and brain stem, and the second to deal with the arteriovenous malformation. At age 36, this father of three young children saw his life forever changed. He remained in the hospital, connected to feeding and breathing tubes (the latter replaced by a tracheotomy), for six weeks. Buff reconstructed details of his hospital stay from stories he was told by family and friends; he has no memory of that period. He was transferred to Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation in New Jersey, where he received extensive physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and returned home in time for Christmas. But years of rehab remained ahead. Despite physical, personal, and financial setbacks, the author employs a generally positive tone in these pages: “God has blessed me with a unique personality trait. I will do something over and over again until I am satisfied with the outcome. It worked for my sports; now it was working for my rehabilitation.” Indeed, athletic activity played a significant role in his life—skiing, surfing, football, soccer, baseball, and especially golf. He highlights the stark contrast between his former routines and his post-surgery days by opening many chapters with joyful recollections of his youth followed by sections describing the initial brain trauma and his gradual recuperation. The only bitterness he displays concerns his wife’s decision to leave him in November 2000: “She would not live with a cripple the rest of her life.…I thought her love for me would stand up through all adversity. Obviously, it couldn’t.” After several years living with his parents, Buff now has his own home, drives a car, and even plays golf. His mission: to encourage others to “keep going.”
An inspiring story of mettle and optimism in the face of overwhelming challenges.Pub Date: July 20, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2662-2
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Toplink Publishing, LLC
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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