Critical Praise

"Kathryn Clark tells a tale of tragedy and transformation. Readers connect with her quickly, easily, feeling what she feels. The story is that of an everyday person struggling to make sense of life and ultimately to open to a new destiny. As most of us know, walking through the doorway is much easier said than done. First we have to understand that change is even possible, then we must listen, and act, sit, cry, dance, love, and ultimately embrace the unknown. Clark invites you on this journey, told from the first person perspective with both spoken and inner narrative. A quick page-turner, I felt her suffering and more importantly felt the growing glimmer of hope, birthing within her a new person. Her story is a universal one. She loses her husband; she struggles to be all that she can for her 3 children, filling both parental roles, nurturing her soul, and not losing herself completely amidst. We will all walk in her shoes (and/or already have), but what she offers is a choice to change our perspective, to find a peace that eludes even those with the purest hearts."

—Marcus Simpson

"The starting point is the discovery of the cancer that will take [the author’s] father's life and this is soon followed by a different form of cancer for her husband. The third death will be that of her mother, the aftermath of which provides the conclusion of the book. The effects of these traumatic events on the narrator and her children provide the framework of the narrative and the action skips from suburban America to the Greek islands that do so much to inform the philosophical and poetic conclusions that the narrator reaches. Told in part by the journal kept by the author, the story is in part the opening of her mind to the wider possibilities of life and the universe as expressed by such elements as Greek and Native American myth and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke."

—John Walsh