An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

Just, just finished this. Sad and yet hopeful, this is the story of the author’s experience of the stillbirth of her first child.  McCracken calls her book “the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending,” as she gives birth to her second child not long after the anniversary of her stillborn son Pudding’s death.

She manages to infuse humor into a story where we have no doubt that her heart had been broken. McCracken’s writing is poetic and yet totally accessible. Her honesty and goodness shine through. By the end, I adored this writer and woman.

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton, with Erin Torneo

Jennifer Thompson woke up to a man raping her at knifepoint. She identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Though she eventually moved on, the attack on her body left a wide swath of emotional scar tissue.

Ronald Cotton swore his innocence as surely as Jennifer Thompson testified to his guilt. At times, his lock-up seemed what allowed Jennifer to (more…)

Seven years ago my mother called my sister and me to tell us she had cancer. The doctor gave her less than a year to live. Despite years of complicated mother-daughter relationships, we turned our lives around in moments and flew down from New York and Boston to be with her.

Our mother had never been one to bear up under pain and she dreaded the idea of being dependant. Hours after we arrived in Florida, she made us promise to kill her when “it became too much.”

When we tried to talk rationally—using words like illegal and jail—she gave us the same demanding glare we’d known since childhood.

You have to help me, she insisted. You girls know I can’t stand pain. Promise! Promise me now!

We, of course, promised. My sister and I had never been able to withstand the glare, and we weren’t about to rebel in the face of her imminent suffering. We did however, as always, use the only weapon at our disposal: the darkest of humor.

I’ll tell you what, my sister said. How about I kill you now?

My mother, as always, frowned and then smiled and began laughing.

You girls are terrible, she said through her head-shaking chuckles.

We relaxed, all comforted by the familiar routine.

In Imperfect Endings, a memoir of daughters being asked to help plan their mother’s suicide, author Zoe Fitzgerald Carter writes the following when revealing how her husband and she wrestled with Carter’s need to help her mother:

How long are you going to run to her every time she calls?

Closing my eyes, I imagine my mother lying in her bed, lonely and afraid. Not of death but of the long ugly road leading to death. And because I am her daughter, both by birth and by design, I’m trapped on that road with her until one of us, or perhaps both of us, can engineer her release. Which mean that, despite my husband’s anger and my children’s unhappiness, the answer is: Always. I will always run to her when she calls.

Imperfect Endings is about that never perfect relationship between mothers and daughters, about how even the closest maternal love is rocked by the push-pull of a mother needing a daughter’s help and a daughter’s need for unwavering support and love. Mixed in, there is often a daughter’s wish to know her mother’s true self and a mother’s wont to hide it.

Towards the end of the book, after the author reads some of her mother’s correspondence (as her mother sleeps,) Carter writes:

Wiping my eyes, I replace the letter in the envelope and go over and place it on her table. I lie down next to her on the bed, looking around the room and out through the windows as if to see and memorize what she sees lying here day after day, because I’m afraid she’s going to leave before I know who she is, and I will be left with only words and images, the mere outlines of my mother’s life.

I stopped at that passage, breathless with a pop of recognition—remembering how little I knew my mother, but how unlike the author, I was afraid of seeing too deeply into her soul, frightened of having to take her pain. At the same time, I realized how difficult it is to reveal sadness to my own daughters and how much I want to wrap all my experiences into a ‘story.’

Zoe FitzGerald Carter is a fearless writer, going deep into a family experience none of us escape, but few of us must face so head on.

My own mother died over three years after her diagnosis. Her death was as lucky in some ways as it could be for her. Cancer never overtook her. She suffered none of the indignities of treatments. She died suddenly and unexpectedly. In one last act of care giving, my sister found my mother and, as always, took care of everything.

Carter, noting her mother’s inability to acknowledge her fears or concerns, referencing Stephen Levine, reflects that people die how they live. This is probably true, but reading this book, I found a soothing corollary. Perhaps when we sit with the people we love as they die, we can change if we want.

Carter and her sisters find their ways to comforting their mother, even as it rips them apart, even as they don’t want to let their mother go on her self-chosen time-table. Imperfect Endings provided a perfect read and I thank Zoe FitzGerald Carter for bringing me into her mother’s home.

It’s there every time I enter the barn: a love so palpable that I often feel my heart will explode. My partner and I founded Catskill Animal Sanctuary, a haven for abused and abandoned farm animals, in 2001, and what surprises me most six years into the work is not what callous people do to animals, not the long hard days, not the uncertainties inherent in rescue work. A volunteer once commented to me, “There’s so much love here it’s even in the dirt,” and yes, she was right. CAS breaths love. That is the biggest surprise.

It is unlikely I would have read that introduction to the engaging, well-written, and totally enjoyable book (okay, I want to say heart-warming, but am a little hesitant to use such a worn cliché) Where the Blind Horse Sings: Love and Healing at an Animal Sanctuary by Kathy Stevens if my sister Jill hadn’t given me a copy.

My sister and I are alike in many ways: we both eat more rapidly than a starving pack of dogs, money slides away from us faster than ice from roofs during sudden thaws, and we will both take up and research a new interest as though we were the first in the world to discover . . . you name it. The difference is, while I was probably Googling best skin serums, Jill found her way to the Catskill Animal Sanctuary where she now gives massages to nine hundred pound pigs with names, and washes hundreds of tin bowls used for feeding rescued and now pampered farm animals. It’s Jill who gave me the above book, written by the founder and director of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, Kathy Stevens.

My sister is a good and caring person. I may also carry the helper gene—but sadly, while her generosity extends to animals, I’ve always been a bit afraid of them. Thus, here is one more reason I am blessed to have her in my life: she helps me remember why humanity should care for and treat well all animals. In this book the author quotes Milos Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being: “True human goodness, in all it’s purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when it’s recipient has no power. Mankind’s true test consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.”

Each chapter in Steven’s book tells the story of another rescued animal. Rambo is an Alpha sheep who lets the staff know when another animal is in trouble. Paulie, a former cockfighting rooster, once ready to cause pain by sinking his talons, now eats lunch with people and accompanies them on errands. Franklin, a depressed pig, after years of neglect must be coaxed away from the known-comfort of his own filth—a goal finally and joyously met by the ever-patient staff. Buddy the titled blind horse, immobilizes by fear after being penned for years in barbed wire that would pierce him with every movement, is taught, through the author’s love and patience, to discover the joy of walking free.

Where the Blind Horse Sings reminded me that humanity might mean looking outside of humans to build our belief in goodness and perseverance. It reminded me how differently each person may experience joy. And it reminded me, how smart my sister is, to find such a good and special place where she can spend time healing pigs and other creatures, great and small, back to their rightful place in the world.

Get this for someone who loves animals. Absolutely buy it for anyone who doesn’t.

PS: Shameful postscript: Another (warning, shameless self-promotion ahead) thing my sister does well (besides soothing animals) is learning new skills faster than a speeding bullet. Click below to see the new book trailer she made for my soon-to-release (Jan 19) novel, The Murderer’s Daughters.

Jill saw what I needed, dove in, learned how, asked her talented friend, Linda Gutterman, to write music, and came up with, what I believe is a haunting 46 seconds. My sister, God, I love her.

The Murderer’s Daughters book trailer on You Tube.

In the continuous stream of NPR that is my life, I just learned that Jerri Nielson died of breast cancer. Dr. Nielson wrote a book I’ve read more than once, and that has now become the final solidification of my vow not to lend out well-loved books.

Her book, Ice Bound a Doctor’s Incredible Battle For Survival at the South Pole, co-written with Maryanne Vollers, fit every criteria I have for a great read: engrossing plot (which I remember in more detail than usual, considering I read it years and years ago) writing which flows (just read the first page on Amazon,) gotta-find-outness (for goodness sake, she discovers she has breast cancer while in Antarctica,) and all sorts of juicy subplots (family troubles, check; intriguing setting which is a story in itself, check; side characters who you deeply care about, check; heroics large and small, check, check, check.

Nielson was hired for one year at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Antarctica, a place where a year brings one sunrise and one sunset. It remains night for the entire winter; you can’t leave during this weather.  “Winterover” crews are there for the duration, dependent only on each other.

Saying it’s cold is like saying ants are small.

Nielsen must perform a biopsy on herself after finding a lump in her breast. And that is just the beginning of this amazing tale of medical courage and adventure. I’ve already sent for two copies from Amazon—one for me, and one for lending. I know no better way to honor this woman, than by re-reading her memoir.

The best of authors become part of the book family who whom keep you going. They offer solace, fun, interest, company, adventure, insight, escape, and flashes of brilliance. Dr. Jerri Nielson felt like one of those friends. Rest in peace, Jerri.

“In the airport, coming home from vacation, he stops at a kiosk and buys grapefruits, which he arranges to have sent to his daughters. They will stumble over the crates waiting on their porches, when they get home from his funeral.”

Thus opens this stark and haunting memoir, written in prose that surrounded me like clear clean water.

If the best books tell truth the best, then this memoir climbs to the top of the pile SUICIDE INDEX doesn’t necessarily tell universal truths, or even grand lofty truths, it tells the intense truth of Wickersham’s experience of her family, and through her generous helping of genuineness—with no moments where this reader felt she was being fed anything shined up for the audience—the author gifts us with a read that is so present, so authentic, that I felt as though I walked beside Wickersham on her painful journey.

SUICIDE INDEX has no villains. It has no heroes (except perhaps for the mostly off-stage father of the suicide—dead long before the act takes place.) Chapters are presented as an index; a conceit of objectivity, which allows Wickersham distance to delve as honestly while taking nothing from the reader:

Suicide:

act of

attempt to imagine, 1—4

bare-bones account, 5—6

immediate aftermath, 7—34

In this before and after story of a well-loved father, the author attempts to make sense of his final act. It is also the story of Wickersham’s bristling and uneasy relationship with her mother.

The story of her father’s suicide is presented bluntly:

Wickersham’s father makes coffee.

He leaves the usual morning cup for his wife, the author’s mother.

He goes into his study and puts a gun to his mouth.

He leaves no note.

Wickersham searches for clues: Was it a brain tumor? Money owed from a sour business deal? His long-hidden depression? Did the mix of his abusive father’s emotional and physical violence and his own perceived and real failures finally form a poison strong enough to eat away at the protective lining (wife, daughters, grandson, brother, etc.) which should have precluded suicide as an option?

The twisted love Wickersham’s mother has for her husband—her vocal struggle with his never successful, and in the end tragically unsuccessful, attempts at business victory, at odds with her love and loyalty—is presented as fact, never as blame. The reader watches in horror as Wickersham’s father repeatedly tries to please his hypercritical wife. He rarely does. Even after his death she resents his stumbling. In the section labeled Suicide: life summarized in an attempt to illuminate, the author writes:

After he died, when we learned that the gun malfunctioned lightly—it put a bullet into his brain but did not fire with enough force to blow his head apart as might have been expected—my mother said, “Jesus Christ, he couldn’t even do that right.”

Joan Wickersham didn’t find the definitive answer to why her father killed himself. In the end no note was found, no secret unearthed that could explain his actions enough for the author to say, ‘oh, so that’s what happened,’ but she does a spectacular job of taking us with her on a journey not dissimilar to one most of us must take. Perhaps, like Wickersham, we try to learn why good parents killed themselves, or we question why parents couldn’t take care of themselves or us, some of us need to know how violence became such a constant visitor in our home. Or why we were neglected. But in the end, if we are lucky, we, like Wickersham, shape our past into something we can hold in our hand and our memory, and from which we can learn some measure of distance, despite how it pulls us back. Even with tragedy behind us, we learn to live with the dissonant rhythm of building our lives forward; even knowing our past always burrows inside.

Harcourt, Inc.

316 pages