Catie Hartsfield

This book had a whole lot going for it. The story is an account of the author's son Bryant's terrible fall of 180 feet during a camping trip. The fact that he survived seems to be nothing short of a miracle, and the harrowing journey this family has been through makes for fascinating reading. I thought about the book when I was not reading it, and looked forward to picking it up every evening. I was fortunate enough to have won this book in the Giveaway program and I thank the author for sending it to me. It was written in such an honest fashion, with the author not sugar coating anything or claiming that any member of her family was perfect, including herself. It was incredible to read about the changes in the behavior of a person who has a serious brain injury and the ups and downs of dealing with mood changes, setbacks, memory problems, and all that goes along with this type of illness. It was amazing to read that sometimes Bryant would hardly know his own parents, yet he could figure out ways to get around doing things he didn't want to do, like wearing a neck brace. This is a book I would recommend to anyone, it is truly an eye opener and a fascinating read.
With that said, it has a couple of flaws in my opinion. I know I tend to be a stickler for grammar, punctuation and spelling but there were a lot of grammatically incorrect sentences and misspellings. We are all used to seeing that type of thing every day in email, facebook postings, etc. but once a book reaches publication, I was surprised to see so many. Sentences such as,"Captain of his team, the team had an awesome year this year", "When Bryant did get out of control, me and the scout leader would calm him down", "It was always he and Bryant on the same soccer team". And when speaking about the cicadas, "I have been hearing from family members how thick the air is with them, but so far I have not seen them in mass". (should be en masse) Oh, and I did find the back story of the cicadas emerging every 17 years to be so interesting.
The only other small complaint I have, and this was probably done for privacy reasons, there are no photos other than the lovely picture of the attractive author with the gorgeous smile on the back cover. I would have loved to have seen pictures of all four of her children and her husband, even if they had been taken years prior. They were all so important to the story and that is just my observation. All in all a fantastic book, and I would give it overall 4.5 stars.… (mehr)