Reviewed by Gail Bradney

One month after her husband-to-be proposed to Dr. Diana Denholm, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. She married him, and for the next 11 years until his death she was his primary caregiver as he suffered through surgery, chemo, and congestive heart failure, followed by a heart transplant, skin cancer, a choking disorder, Parkinson’s, and many more dire conditions—ranging from gout to osteoarthritis—too numerous to name here. Upon hearing this story, is it so wrong to feel sympathy for the wife?

Now working as a medical psychotherapist, Dr. Denholm has become a pioneering thought leader in the field of caregivers’ health. In a new book, The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook (Hunter House Publishers, December 2011, ISBN: 978-0-89793-605-7), Dr. Denholm draws from her own experiences and interviews with six real-life caregiving wives. She shares strategies, inspiration, and stories of success designed to help women struggling with the multiple challenges of being a caregiver to a husband or partner with a serious long-term illness.

And there are many such women—more than 30 million women are caregivers for an ill loved one. When that dying loved one is your husband or partner, the day-to-day matters of life get to be a challenge: your role in their care, your self-care, your ongoing lives, household management, sleep, sex, changes and strains on your marriages, and current and future finances, to name just a few.

Although there’s a lot of information and help available for those “final days” and the grieving afterward, this is the rare book that offers practical written instructions for making life and marriage work during the long months and years wives face as a caregiver.

Dr. Denholm’s approach is refreshingly realistic and practical. It’s not written from a rah-rah cheerleader’s perspective. She doesn’t try to tell her readers to be upbeat and positive. On the contrary—she advises them to acknowledge and embrace all of their emotions, including difficult ones such as anger, guilt, annoyance, grief, stress, and resentment. And she doesn’t shy away from hot-button topics, nor does she pretend that it’s going to be easy to tell him he shouldn’t drive anymore, or that you need to discuss funeral arrangements, or that you’d like to go away with friends for the weekend. Instead, she offers readers creative ideas and lots of practical tools wives can use to deal with the most common issues women face when their husbands suffer from a protracted illness.

Specifically, she presents a six-step process to help women problem solve with their husbands. It’s a model she developed and has used successfully with her therapy clients. It helps them prioritize their “issues”—in other words, figure out which topics are best left unsaid or shared only with a close friend, and which ones need to be worked out one-on-one with the husband. It gives them a toolkit of communication tips and techniques to make “the talk” easier. And it enables them to learn a method for coming to “Understandings” with their husbands on everything from in-law interference to cleaning his ostomy bag.

There’s a whole section of the book devoted to the big C—in this case not cancer, but codependency. Dr. Denholm helps wives take an honest look at whether their actions are keeping the husband weak or are in fact appropriate to his real needs and abilities. And she shows how she and others have navigated around the most common obstacles, including driving, eating, sex, hygiene, and financial and legal matters. Readers also learn how to bring more balance, fun, and free time into their life as caregiving wife.

Although the intended audience for this book is wives, Denholm’s ultimate aim is to help husbands and wives work through the hardships of long-term illness so they can regain their love, respect, and compassion for each other. Yes, caregiving can destroy lives and marriages, but it can also be a cathartic driver of change and growth. That’s her big message.

Dr. Denholm believes two partners can and should both take responsibility for keeping the marriage healthy, even if the husband may be dying. Her approach teaches women “compassionate empowerment.” She says it is possible to have a healthy marriage with a husband who is gravely ill. When the caregiving wife is ready to be honest with herself and her husband, Dr. Denholm’s book will give her the tools, tips, and structure to do it.

Cooking for one is not something most people want to try to tackle.  That’s why there’s a plethora of frozen dinners, right?  Sure, we say to ourselves, “This year I will really make the effort to cook special meals for myself and treat my body to the healthy food it deserves.”  Somehow, though, the idea seems to fall by the wayside before it even gets started.  “It’s too hard to make a meal just for one person,” “I end up wasting so much of what I make,” “Why spend time cooking just for me?,” or “I just don’t know what to make for just me.”

The excuses most of us make as single people are limitless what it comes to cooking for ourselves.  Maybe we don’t want to think about what it means to cook for just one, or maybe we’ve spent years cooking for a family and now sizing it down is just a difficult concept.  With so much convenience food at our disposal, it also makes us lazy in our decision-making when it comes to food.  Stephanie Bostic if determined to pull us out of the singleton’s food rut into which many have fallen.

In One Bowl: Simple Healthy Recipes for One, Bostic not only makes it easy for the newbie cook, but for the experienced as well.  What too often seems a daunting task, is made simple and attainable in this step-by-step cookbook for the single life.  From several ways to cook an egg, what utensils are necessary and which are just convenient, and what you need in your pantry, this guide keeps it basic, but with flair.

None of the recipes in One Bowl are time-consuming or overwhelming, which make them easy to implement in everyday life.  As a bonus, every recipe can easily be doubled to accommodate company, as well.  Most of the dishes center on fresh ingredients, but can be easily translated into canned or frozen options when fresh is not available.  Recipes like Southwest Frittata and Plum Duck Breast give fancier options of what can be done in single serving size, while most of the other recipes keep it a bit more simple, such as Breakfast Parfait and English Muffin Pizzas.

One Bowl not only is a great tool for simple, healthy meals, but teaches how to add flavor to every dish using an array of spices and sauces.  Bostic gives us recipes to easily whip up peanut sauce, vinaigrettes, and other toppings, as well as a spice how-to.  From basil to turmeric, there is a handy chart of how to use the spices, when to use them, and how much- taking the guesswork out of the world of seasonings.

With worksheets, nutrition and portion guides, and attainable recipes, Bostic separates herself from many cookbook authors by making honest, easy food without being pretentious.  It is too often we buy a cookbook, then place it on a shelf to be forgotten with the rest because the offerings are too pricey, not readily available, or above the average skill level in the kitchen.  She not only teaches us just how easy it is to cook for one, but shows us that learning to feed oneself it essential to the healthy life we all deserve.  Whether you are a bachelor/ette, a single retiree that has always cooked for a family, or someone who’s partner is often traveling or working different shifts, One Bowl will fit easily into your kitchen.

Every once in a while I read a book that motivates me to action. The new one by financial advisor and eldercare expert Harold L. Lustig did just that. In his curiously titled Naked in the Nursing Home: The Woman’s Guide to Paying for Long-Term Care without Going Broke, Lustig introduces a topic to which, admittedly, I hadn’t previously given much thought. But now I definitely will.

Here’s why. Our odds of needing long-term care are greater than one in two at age 65, much higher than other risks we routinely insure, such as automobiles and houses. And long-term care is not just a topic for older people. In fact, over 40 percent of people who need such care are under age 65. Lustig points out that Michael J. Fox was only 30 when he noticed a twitch in his finger that was later diagnosed as Parkinson’s. Christopher Reeve was 43 when he had his tragic riding accident that left him a quadriplegic.

For women, in particular, long-term care is a nightmare, because wives and daughters not only bear most of the caregiving burden for their aging loved ones, but they are far more likely than men to end up in a nursing home.

If getting injured or ill enough to require long-term care doesn’t scare you, the cost of paying for it will. I checked the estimated annual cost of long-term care for my state, New York, and it ranges from about $45,000 to $119,000 a year, depending on the type of care I’d require or desire. If, like me, you’re one of the proverbial “99 percent,” it’s doubtful that you can afford that price tag. And unless you have a wealthy partner or a gaggle of wealthy and generous adult children, chances are your loved ones can’t either.

But don’t despair just yet. Lustig has helped many people avoid what he calls a “family financial crisis” brought on by long-term care. The key is to plan for it so you can pay for it—without jeopardizing your assets, such as your home, or your children’s financial futures.

What about insurance, you ask? Like tropical storm Irene’s victims in upstate New York, who thought their homeowners insurance covered flood damage (and discovered, too late, that it didn’t in most cases), you may be under the impression that long-term care is covered by your health insurance or by Medicare—the free healthcare Americans get after age 65. Wrong! What about Medicaid, you ask, the government-funded insurance for low-income Americans? Well, Lustig likens Medicaid to a minefield. To get Medicaid to pay for long-term care, you have to qualify financially, and if you happen make one of the 15 classic Medicaid mistakes he warns readers to avoid, you will lose your eligibility. His advice? Consult a qualified elder law attorney experienced in Medicaid and current on all its most recent tricks and traps, who can assess your finances and help lead you through the Medicaid maze.

Okay, so are their other alternatives? Yes! If you’re a veteran or the spouse or surviving spouse of a veteran who served in an armed conflict, you could be in luck. That option is called Aid & Attendance, and it’s an excellent, free long-term care benefit funded by the Veterans Administration. Lustig calls it the best-kept secret in long-term care.

If that option isn’t available, there are a number of great long-term care insurance options. The good news is that LTC insurance is cheaper the younger you buy it. If you’re under 60 and you’re healthy, you may feel like running, not walking, to your local insurance agent after you read Lustig’s book. LTC insurance has its own “gotchas,” but if you’re serious about wanting to protect yourself and your family against future financial ruin, in the event that you get injured or are diagnosed with a serious medical condition, LTC insurance offers the best protection and peace of mind. The section devoted to LTC insurance provides an overview of four classes of LTC insurance, discusses how it will affect your taxes, and includes frequently asked questions.

Lustig then presents case studies of three hypothetical families to demonstrate how they might use all of this information to maximize their options. He also has a chapter on the warning signs of elder financial abuse and how to prevent it, and gives us tips for finding trustworthy professionals who can help, such as geriatric care managers, financial advisors, and elder law attorneys. In the back of the book, Lustig includes pages of valuable resources for patients, seniors, and their caregivers and loved ones, as well as a glossary of perplexing terms found in insurance, medical, or legal documents.

For boomer women worried about caring for spouses, elderly parents, and eventually, themselves, this comprehensive resource offers guidance and information they won’t find anywhere else. Don’t sit around worrying about outliving your assets in some run-down long-term care facility. Read this book so you’ll be motivated to do some smart planning instead.

Reviewed by author Bob Cherny

Eleanor Roosevelt’s impact on current American culture is easy to underestimate. This book puts her back in her rightful place in her historical era as well as pointing out the initiatives she started that continue to this day. In spite of the power of her words and the strength of the coalitions she assembled, the battles she fought continue to be fought.

The book is liberally supplemented with quotes from Eleanor like this one, “I think the day of selfishness is over; the day of really working together has come, and we must learn to work together all of us, regardless of race or creed or color… We go ahead together or we go down together…” This comment is as relevant today as it was when she made it half a century ago.

Anne Atkins’ prose is literate, and yet easy to read, with an understanding of which issues that were as topical when Eleanor dealt with them as they are today. It is this ability to make one of the greatest women in American history as contemporary as any woman on today’s political scene that gives the book its greatest power.

This quote comes from early in the book:

Are these “the good old days” if life expectancy is a brief forty-five years? Millions die each year of infectious diseases and thirty-five thousand die every year in industrial accidents. There is no workers’ compensation, no unemployment pay and no insurance. Severance pay is given because something at work got severed—a hand or a foot. In any arena Eleanor fights injustice and perseveres against overwhelming odds and chilling cruelties. Like Wonder Woman in support hose, she will win battles on the local, the national and the global scale. Her life is an example of moral courage and she becomes internationally known as “First Lady of the World.”

First, she must survive her childhood.

Anne varies her tempo, her writing style and her pacing as appropriate to the events in Eleanor’s life she is describing and at the same time keeps the work simple enough to use as a middle school or high school text book. While this is hardly the most erudite writing I have ever seen, it is solid, competent and conveys its message in a way that makes it read as smoothly as a mainstream novel.

One of the most difficult tasks for a biographer is to put the subject in their historical context and then draw the results of the subject’s actions into the present day. This is the book’s greatest strength. It is not the be-all-and-end-all in-depth biography of Eleanor Roosevelt with mountains or original research and hundreds of footnotes, but it is an open and accessible work that pays homage to one of the greatest women in American history.

The book is liberally illustrated with photographs which are carefully chosen to support the text. For the most parts these work, but their effectiveness is limited in some cases by the quality of the originals. There are a few photos that I am not sure I would have included, but even those do help further the story although not as much as some others.

The sidebar quotes are both an enhancement and a distraction. As with the photos, while I agree with the inclusions of most of them, I am not convinced some of the others belonged as sidebars and not in the body of the text. From the thousands of quotes and photos available, choosing the few to use must have been a mind-numbing task, but the final effect is solid and helps illuminate the written words.

I recommend this book for anyone over the age of fourteen who cares about where America is headed.

No Children, No Guilt
by Sylvia D. Lucas
Vere Press
Copyright © September 2011
ASIN: B005MTX75O
$3.99 Kindle
113 KB

How could anyone not want children?  If you’ve ever rolled your eyes and chose not to answer that question when you were confronted with it because you didn’t really want to have to face the never ending debate that most certainly will follow, no worries. Sylvia D. Lucas as answered it for you in her latest commentary now available on Kindle: No Children, No Guilt. Sylvia begins Chapter 1 with a simple list of some reasons why some women don’t want children:

Pregnancy
Childbirth
Crying (mother and baby both)
Potty-training
PTA meetings

Women who don’t want children see that list and a strange noise comes from them that sounds a little like “Nn-guh-yuck.”

Sure, you might think Ms. Lucas is being tongue-in-cheek and in a way she is, but only in the beginning.  You can’t help but smile and maybe chuckle from reading her almost stand-up like humor. But as you reach Chapter 2, “Accept Your Disinclination Toward Motherhood,” Ms. Lucas begins to explore more serious issues into why a woman might not want to have children.  Chapter 2 begins with this humorous – and oh so true – scene:

I can’t remember exactly when my initial doubts about motherhood began.  My first clue, however, should have come when I was about eight years old and playing in a cave-fort I’d made under the dining room table. Blankets hung over the sides, and doll-daughter and I sat in the dark to wait through an imaginary snowstorm. At some point during that made-up catastrophe, made-up daughter and I had an argument. I threw her on the floor. Then I picked her up and whapped her on the side of the head. I can still see her long red hair whipping around her face.

I’d carry her — and sometimes swing her — by that hair. My dad said once, “How would you like to be carried around like that?”

After I cut her hair into inch-long clumps, I didn’t carry her around so much, anymore.

As a little girl, I preferred my toy cars, my machine gun squirt gun, and “spy” glasses to baby dolls and Barbies, and later, as a teen, I noticed there was still a significant difference between the other girls and me. Nothing I can put a finger on even now, but if I had to guess without the benefit of any scientific evidence whatsoever, I would say they simply had more estrogen. They liked painting their nails, reading Sylvia Plath, and carrying Benetton bags. They also seemed to hang out in groups and had bigger breasts than I did.

It had to be estrogen.

This follows with a chapter about owning up to your decision and not being afraid to tell others.  The dialogue she presents to back up her point is spot on and again very humorous as the narrator tells “Husband” she doesn’t want to birth his children. A key chapter follows about confronting the opposition. It begins with a somewhat heartfelt conversation with her father:

“Raising you girls,” he said. “That’s the best thing I ever did.”

Then he called me selfish.

He didn’t mean it in a bad way, even though it’s almost impossible to not feel insulted after being called selfish.

He meant it as a statement of fact, and he was right.

I don’t want my life to change. I don’t want toys all over the place. I don’t want to give up sleep. I don’t want to worry. I don’t want to feel the constant parental guilt that I’m somehow doing it wrong. I don’t want other parents judging me for somehow doing it wrong. I don’t want to put my goals on hold. I don’t want to be pregnant. Most of all, I don’t want to give birth. In that moment, life as a freefloating, unchained individual ends. Forever.

I don’t want a newborn, a baby, a tot, a toddler, or a teen.

I, I, I…

Me, me, me…

And much of this debate focuses on just that: being selfish.  Your mother and father want to be grandparents and shovel on the guilt, or the spouse feels the need to procreate so he can be a father and be all-American with a wife, dog, picket fence, and 2.5 children.  Sure, it’s the kind of stuff Norman Rockwell paintings are made of, but in the end, it’s the woman who has to deal with pregnancy, labor, nursing, and the majority of other motherly tasks that follow for the next 18 years.  Sure, children mess up your social life and your pretty dresses, but in the end Lucas really focuses on the women and her own thoughts and needs.  It may sound selfish, but to see it in a different light you have to eliminate the stigma that has us brain trained that women were meant to be mothers.

Lucas even follows up with tactics for standing by your decision: how to pick the perfect mate, making it happen (pill use, condoms, etc.), facing social awkwardness at a party, or being judged.  It’s practically Health 101, but the deeper topics your gym school teacher certainly never approached outside the textbook.

The book ends with a Top Ten list of keypoints to remember which starts with “It’s your life.” and ends with “Enjoy your freedom.”  While Lucas’s approach to this topic is at times pure genius humor, that’s how she gets and holds your attention.  The underlying theme is much more serious, and for that I stand up and applaud her.  If you are childless and proud, Ms. Lucas has written you a bible.  Be proud, but if you need courage to stand up to your mother and tell her why she isn’t going to get grandkids, then read No Children, No Guilt first!

Reviewed by Gail Bradney

The Shaman and the Ironman—it sounds a bit like a pair of superheroes. But when shaman-healer Brant Secunda and six-time world champion triathlete Mark Allen teamed up to write their newest title, Fit Soul-Fit Body: 9 Keys to a Healther, Happier You, they really did create something extraordinary.

As a reader of 40-50 health books a year, it’s a pleasure to come across one that’s so different, fresh, and original. Not surprisingly, it’s been endorsed by heavyweights of the health and business world, including Steven R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), who wrote the book’s foreword, and bestselling women’s health author Christiane Northrup MD.

The authors themselves have a compelling back-story. Secunda lived among the Huichol people of Mexico for 12 years and studied under their 110-year-old shaman. There he learned how the Huichols live to unbelievably old ages, are rarely sick, walk up steep mountains carrying heavy loads well into their 80s, laugh all the time, and are calm and serene.

When he came back to America, Secunda began translating the health secrets of the Huichols into strategies that Westerners of the 21st century could understand and put into practice. During this time he met Mark Allen, dubbed “The World’s Fittest Man” by Outside magazine and “The Greatest Triathlete of All Time” by Triathlete magazine. (Okay, maybe they are superheroes.) To make a long story short, Secunda helped Allen soar to greatness on the Ironman world championship circuit, and Allen helped Secunda understand the psychology, physiology, nutrition, and fitness requirements of an ultra athlete.

Now they travel the country teaching workshops on the successful approach they developed and on which Fit Soul-Fit Body is based. Reflecting their backgrounds, their book is a terrific blend of ancient shamanic wisdom and the latest scientific findings on nutrition, fitness, mood, and stress. One of their big messages is that to be healthy, you can’t just change your diet and exercise. You have to address your spiritual health as well. The idea is to forge a powerful connection between your physical body and the inner, intangible part of you—call it your “soul”—that allows you to do just about anything. When you do, you accomplish more at work. Lose unwanted weight. Sleep like a baby at night. You feel light-hearted and optimistic. Suddenly, your relationships are more satisfying. And you’re in the best shape of your life.

To help you accomplish all of this, Secunda and Allen present nine keys that address different aspects of physical, mental, and spiritual health. These include everything from stress reduction and coping with difficult emotions, to goal setting and changing your eating habits. Some of the most interesting parts of the book deal with the health benefits of nature. They show readers, even city dwellers, how to reconnect with the natural world to boost your moods, get smarter, and improve your performance.

Each chapter of the book tackles one of the nine “keys” and includes activities, tips, specific recommendations, scientific studies, interesting anecdotes, and tools to help you achieve mastery before moving to the next one. I’ve often thought that if one could find the perfect health, diet, and fitness book and actually follow every one of its recommendations to the letter, it could be life changing. Fit Soul-Fit Body might very well be that book.

It’s Flu season again!  That time of year when most of us get a yearly shot at our workplace or local pharmacy.  That time of year to invest in extra Clorox wipes, Purell, and any other disinfectant that claims to fight viruses. That time of year to pull out the ole chicken noodle soup recipe from Mom’s recipe box, which you only make at this time of the year anyway.

But if you are like me, you can still plan on getting sick each and every year.  I usually catch a bug when the seasons drastically change in November and then again right before Spring.

That’s one reason why I wanted to read and review Tom Ingegno’s book, You got Sick – Now What?  Working by day in the medical textbook field, I have no interest whatsoever in pouring through volumes of fine print on how to treat minor ailments and sicknesses.  That’s the first reason Mr. Ingegno’s book appealed to me.  It’s a quick 68 pages with not a one of them wasted.

The book is divided up into 9 simple, easy-to-read and understand chapters starting with a nice introduction explaining why you might want to give these simple secrets a try to combat the next cold season:

It seems as if somewhere along the way, we have forgotten to take care of ourselves. We quickly grab over-the-counter drugs to alleviate the symptoms of a cold or fl u: coughs, congestion, aches, pains, chills, and fevers. We line up every fl u season to get a shot, which is the medical community’s best guess at what the next fl u strains might be. Th is shot has even been linked to causing fl u-like symptoms in adults. Being a true holistic practitioner, I am not saying that these modern remedies are unsafe or ineffective, but what if you took control of your health using some safe and effective traditional cures to eliminate—or at least shorten —the course and alleviate the symptoms of cold-weather diseases?

 For me, the book was also organized into sort of a “level of difficulty” as each chapter progressed.  It starts with more simplistic techniques like heat therapy and soups.  There are also some awesome soup and tea recipes included that I want to try.  Then the book progresses into breathing techniques and scraping.  Finally, it ends with some more advanced techniques that may even require professional assistance like acupressure, cupping, and moxibustion.

We all have those old time family remedies that have been passed down generation to generation, or we’ve read those emails that get forwarded around about all the household grocery items that are good for curing and treating different ailments. My mother always treated a sore throat with hot salt water.  My dad treated a cold or the sniffles with a shot of whiskey before bed. While Ingegno’s therapies are not that simple, they do focus on traditional oriental medicines that are not as complex as you would think.

If you are seeking new ways to start combating the flu and cold season, I’d definitely recommend a dose of Tom Ingegno’s book.

Joel Friedlander is a well established authority in the self-publishing world and the force behind The BookDesigner website. His old-school self-publishing efforts, before Print On Demand, led to his becoming a provider of customized self-publishing services—a book producer, to use his term. Much of his new book is culled from blog posts of the past years, with an emphasis on the why of self-publishing more than the how.

A Self-Publisher’s Companion is not a technical guide and leans more in the direction of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series than . . . For Dummies. Even so, it provides thorough coverage of what’s involved in self-publishing for an author, with an informative introduction followed by sections on Bookmaking, Social Media, E-Books, the self-publishing experience, and marketing. By avoiding technical specifics, this book should remain relevant in the volatile self-publishing world for a long time.

For one thing that will never change for an author is that understanding the rationale for choosing to self-publish is vital. Any author committing to this route, after relishing that initial surge of independent spirit, inevitably feels alone. He faces self-doubt and even fear when circumnavigating all the options and information available out there. Most sources of ‘advice’ are self-serving, more interested in the author’s money than his art. Early on, Joel makes a key observation only someone with his experience could grasp fully:

. . . the modern notion of self-publishing depends on the opposition of this type of book publishing to traditional publishing.

Many take the self-publishing route because of rejection from or disdain with traditional publishing. As such, the choice to self-publish is often a reaction, consciously or subconsciously, not an action. A Self-Publisher’s Companion, as its author did many years ago, works on the positive, more self-inspiring notion of choosing independence, not out of frustration, but initiative. It’s not an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ world, but a ‘me’ world.

That means the author willingly takes on the role of publisher—assuming responsibility for the production of his book, making business and publishing decisions accordingly, with full awareness and control of each stage, determining with self-honesty what he is capable of doing and affording himself. The road may lead him to realize he can do everything himself, or that he can benefit from a subsidy publisher, or that he’s better off involving a book producer like Joel Friedlander.

Part of the downsizing of the publishing industry has been the upsizing of the freelance marketplace.

This is only natural as is Friedlander’s persuasive soft-selling of the services he provides. But authors need to know what is possible and the availability of these services can get lost in the great promises of AuthorHouse, Createspace, and other self-publishing services companies, each of which carry financial or quality risks. In the end:

You need to produce a high-quality book to have a chance in the market.

A Self-Publisher’s Companion gives an author the information and confidence to make solid choices. It can help an author determine his desired degree of involvement in the publishing process. Even if that choice turns out to be no involvement and that he’s better off with traditional publishing. After all, that too is an independent decision.

Craig Machen is a bad boy, or was a bad boy (if you can ever really shake that persona).  It’s not entirely his fault, though.  Rather, it is a result of a series of unfortunate life circumstances that led him to be self-destructive.  Sex, drugs, rock and roll, and strippers.  ‘Still Life With Brass Pole’ has it all- in excess.  It is a drug and alcohol-induced road trip on which Machen takes the reader in this coming-of-age memoir.

It is a well written, at times funny, at times heartbreaking story of a boy thrown into an adult world far too early.  Machen has created an honest narrative without romanticizing parts in order to make himself look better.  He tells us about his drug and alcohol abuse, and less than reputable lifestyle brought on by abuse and neglect in his childhood.  However, this is never an excuse, as he points out that he knows he did not make the best decisions at times.

Machen examines the life of those involved in strip clubs and what generally leads them there.  It is a way of gaining acceptance and control in a life that has never offered such before.  As he deconstructs the sex industry, is becomes apparent that he knows his place within it and that he never really accepts it.  He notes of men and women in the industry,  “[...] most of us wouldn’t have come this way if things had been different.”  His fascination and attraction to strippers is a result of what quickly becomes an apparent need to save the damsels in distress so he can postpone focusing on his own needs a bit longer.

The one thing that seems to pull the author out of his downward spiral is his interest in bodybuilding.  He works so hard on his body and musters up enough focus to win Mr. Teen Arizona, which becomes his crowning achievement.  During the times that bodybuilding is his main focus, he is able to give up drugs and alcohol, only to become reliant on steroids.  As notice for his impressive physique grows, so does his pride in knowing that he created it with his own determination, and issues of his views of masculinity begin to surface.

Machen’s search for love, acceptance, and identity merge together when he meets one woman that makes it all seem worth it.  She is the one female in his life that does not need him to save her, rather she holds him up as he learns how to save himself.  As he learns who he is and wants to become, she is there to support him through the bumpy ride.  It is the first time in his life that he seems to feel true acceptance and what a healthy relationship really is.

‘Still Life With Brass Pole’ is a story of falling down and getting back up- repeatedly.  He delves into many themes and looks beneath the surface of the lives of those involved in addiction, strip clubs, bodybuilding, adoption, and the cycle of abuse.  In this dynamic tale of exploration, Machen weaves his way through binges, strip clubs, and girls that need saving- at least, he wants to try to save them.  What he finally discovers is that he is the one that needs saving, and only he can save himself.

Visit Craig Online!

Imagine life is pretty good!  Yeah, you’ve got bills to pay and kids to clothe and feed.  But overall, it’s pretty good.  You’ve got a spouse, a family, a house, a job, a car…outside of the day to day stresses, you can’t complain much.

You’ve done pretty good for yourself.  And then a wrench gets thrown in the gears of that well oiled machine called life and messes everything up.

That’s exactly what happened to Benjamin Carey when he began suffering from fatigue and his wife encouraged him to have a physical done.  Ben was fit – a college athlete – and knew there couldn’t be anything wrong.

His doctor encourages him to have a stress test done, and that’s when Ben discovers he has an enlarged aorta – an aortic aneurysm that could shut him down at any moment.  It’s that wrench I mentioned that messes up life, and open heart surgery is the only choice Ben has.

Barefoot in November is Ben’s memoir of the year that followed.  It begins right from his doctor’s discovery and takes us through every step, up until a full year after the surgery when Ben runs an NY marathon on the anniversary.  There are even journal entries in the book from his wife that were recorded when Ben was having his surgery.

The book is a quick read and is dedicated to John Ritter, who died from an aortic aneurysm.  There are also some photos of Ben and his family, although they are a bit small and grainy. It’s a very inspiring read for those who may be suffering from heart problems, or for anyone who enjoys a good real life “survivor” story.

The only set back (and it’s a minor one) for me was that the first chapter is 115 pages long.  The few chapters that round out the rest of the book are much smaller, so I would have liked to have seen the majority of the book broken up into smaller chunks as well.  There are also headers on the blank pages in between chapters, but the editing of the book overall is not bad.

Kudos to Ben for sharing his story with the world and shedding light on the subject.  As his opening pages say, “It’s only as bad as you make it.”  And by telling our stories we encourage and inspire, and remind people that we are not alone.  Ben was (is) a strong man and had the will to survive and make it through, but he also had the love and support of friends and family which is often what makes a heart beat anyway.