A tender memoir that combines the deep sadness of loss with the joys of parenthood even under incredibly trying...
Within hours of giving birth, Liz Logelin died of a pulmonary blood clot, leaving her husband Matt as sole caretaker of their daughter Madeline.
From their first meeting in 1996, they experienced a story-book romance and were blessed with close family and friends, good jobs and a new home. With their first child on the way, things began to fall apart when Liz became so nauseated that she couldn't keep food down and began to lose weight. This affected their unborn child, who was being starved of nutrients. There were other complications, as well. As a result, Liz went on bed rest and was then hospitalized, and the premature delivery of the baby seven weeks before its due date became necessary. Faced with a double calamity—his wife's death and a premature infant to care for—Matt wondered how he could manage. While friends and family rallied around him and his employer gave him generous paid leave of absence, he was completely unprepared for the responsibilities of single-parenthood. The author writes movingly of how his grief mingled with joy as his tiny infant thrived under his care and he began to piece his life back together. Seven months later, with Maddy in day care, he returned to work. Gradually, through the Internet, he met and bonded with others in similar circumstances, and he continued to maintain close ties with his friends and relatives.
A tender memoir that combines the deep sadness of loss with the joys of parenthood even under incredibly trying circumstances.Pub Date: April 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-446-56430-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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
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