A serviceably written yet inspired exploration of the meaning of commitment.
A celebrated long-distance hiker’s account of how she captured the Appalachian Trail speed-hiking record.
For Davis, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail was no ordinary footpath. It was the place where she had met her first love, a man who broke her heart in 2007. Four years later, it became the place to which she once again felt “called” by God to “praise Him with the talents and gifts He had given me.” Davis had by then married a fellow Christian named Brew who had been helping her do something totally new: supported hikes. With his help, she broke the women’s thru-hiking record in 2008. She did not attempt the overall record until 2011, however, since she knew it would involve her somewhat reluctant then-boyfriend Brew. “I don’t know if my husband would ever have agreed to such a difficult, thankless task if we hadn’t planned the adventure directly after we got engaged,” she writes. Davis began her marathon hike in the rugged mountains of Maine, following the A.T. through 12 other states and into “the heart of backcountry Georgia.” Brew faithfully met her with food and water at designated stopping points, while fellow hiking enthusiasts accompanied her along portions of the trail. Over 46 grueling days, Davis endured injuries, illness, emotional meltdowns, sleet storms, extreme heat and stifling humidity, all of which tested the limits of her mind, body, marriage and friendships. In the end, she discovered that her 2,181-mile journey was not just about living out a dream, but about understanding the nature of love. Like the A.T. itself, “love is not always easy and not always fun.” At the same time, it is the truest way to becoming “your best self.”
A serviceably written yet inspired exploration of the meaning of commitment.Pub Date: June 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8253-0693-8
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Beaufort
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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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