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You are here: Home / Archives for breast cancer

Accidental Pilgrim – from mammogram to miracle

February 21, 2015 by Patricia Brooks

BOOK REVIEW              Accidental Pilgrim from mammogram to miracle     

Author:           Erin O’Brien    accidentalpilgrim7@gmail.com

Book Reviewer:          Patricia L. Brooks, author and publishing consultant

Erin O’Brien’s heartwarming, provocative and uplifting experience will capture your heart and challenge you to take a look at your own faith.  You will be enticed to read on.

The Accidental Pilgrim is more than a story about a woman’s battle with breast cancer and coming back to her faith.  It is a story of hope, and the willingness to sign on for the challenge of her life.  Erin reminds us we are all going to die and to live in faith and God’s grace while we are alive.

When O’Brien hears the news she reacts as anyone would – this happens to other people.  And despite a fierce fight against it and a stance on taking the lead in her cancer journey, she feels overwhelmed as things progress.  She makes life changing decisions in a small amount of time while feeling helpless to do so when life begins to take on its own persona. She realizes how preoccupied she has been with a safe life and that she does not know an authentic connection with the space she inhabits.

O’Brien writes engagingly about the human spirit when faced with a life threatening illness.  In this highly introspective tale she deeply examines the meaning and complexities of her faith alongside her battle with stage 4 cancer.  Her mind is a playground and at times her take on things is amusing, and certainly refreshing.

She addresses hard questions such as how will my body changes change me?  How will my spiritual life take me toward new life?  How will I refresh myself with God to grow stronger?

O’Brien’s healing in the spirit proves to be a meaningful milestone as she begins the New Year after her endless dark days of treatment.  She begins to recognize how we are like flashes of light until we learn to stop and tough the light.

This powerful book takes us from mammogram to miracle as the sub-title suggests.  It is the story of a woman knocked down by cancer playfully and courageously getting up after chemotherapy, radiation and surgery to a spiritual transformation and open to a miracle.

O’Brien’s prose has a spare, clean elegance that is precise, but can, at times, leave the reader wanting more.  Her love of life is infectious.  She does not offer any explanations beyond her faith and personal convictions.  She prods us along to accept death and life as part of our journey.  You might be frustrated with her casualness, but don’t be; her heart is beautiful.

She shares the lessons she learned about life and herself.  She’s open to possibility – both in battle with life threatening cancer and a return to her faith.  She does not sanitize things for us by minimizing cancer or illuminating faith.  She does not baby-proof anything and takes things head-on.  I challenge you with this memoir.

Respectfully submitted,

Patricia L. Brooks, author, publishing consultant

www.brooksgoldmannpublishing.comAccidental Pilgrim Cover Small

Filed Under: Blogroll, Old Reviews, PUBLISHING PICKS Tagged With: accidental pilgrim, books, breast cancer, brooks goldmann publishing company, Catholic Church, erin o'brien, memoirs, Patricia L. Brooks, SCOTTSDALE SOCIETY OF WOMEN WRITERS

BOOK REVIEW The Slumber Party from Hell – author, Sue Ellen Allen and reviewer Patricia L. Brooks

March 20, 2012 by Patricia Brooks

 

The Slumber Party from Hell, the book Sue Ellen Allen published in 2011, seems like an intimate chat with an old chum.  It’s a book that is more like an overheard
conversation.  You feel you’re intruding but you can’t stop listening.

In this well written work, The Slumber Party from Hell puts the spotlight on the Arizona prison system that is penalizing, but not rehabilitating its inmates.

Allen says it took her seven years in prison to realize the Arizona prisons are part of the problem as they focus narrowly on penalizing and punishing our prison population.  She believes her life has changed completely from this experience of dealing with breast cancer as a prisoner, as well as the unnecessary death of her friend and roommate Gina to cancer while she too was in prison.

Allen knew it was the end of the world as she had known it once she stepped in to that life and she was determined to make the best of it.

Allen puts some of her self-made power to work by being a leader and role model while behind bars by volunteering her expertise and ideas learned on the outside as a professional woman and community leader.  She helps many of the younger women who are struggling develop themselves within the confines of an unfair and unjust prison system.

She also attempts to shrink the negative impact of prison for herself and her fellow inmates by starting programs positive in nature.  This is no easy feat because most of the rules are unrealistic and frustrating at best.

Although often her writing leaves you wishing things were not as she describes them, you find joy and humor in the small things she celebrates during those seven years of incarceration.

You are able to decipher what is really going on in some of the chaos and craziness to make a little sense of the journey, but in most areas to no avail.  It is what it is and the few gems in the story are Sue Ellen herself, along with a couple of her friends – inside and out.

This is a story of a few founders of the truth in a world where innocence and beauty do not exist.  Some readers will be engaged by Allen’s fierce convictions and continuous mentions of hope and gratitude for the lessons she is learning and the person she is becoming.

Others will be turned off by the blatant honesty of life in the Arizona prison system and the horrors she witnessed.  But throughout it all, you will find humor and humanness to admire just as I did.  You will find respect for her in your own way and you will surely be grateful for your life just the way it is today.

This week she is celebrating three years since her release March 18, 2009.  She celebrated 10 years cancer free on Valentine’s Day, Feb 14, 2012.

Book Reviewer:

Patricia L. Brooks patricia@pplbrooks.com
480-250-5556

President/Founder – Scottsdale Society of Women Writers

President/Owner – Brooks Goldmann Publishing, LLC

www.blog.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com

Author – Gifts of Sisterhood www.amzn.com/B006MLA91Q

Filed Under: AZ Authors Association, Blogroll, brooks goldmann publishing, business consultation, Memoir, memoir writing workshop, Old Reviews, PUBLISHING PICKS, SCOTTSDALE SOCIETY OF WOMEN WRITERS Tagged With: Arizona Prisons, breast cancer, cancer, courage, Faith, Gina's Team, Hope, Perryville Prison, PUBLISHING PICKS, Sue Ellen Allen, The Slumber Party from Hell, women in prison, writing

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