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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring, hopeful, powerful, excellent, November 22, 2007
I must commend Ms. Krabacher and the editorial team at Touchstone for producing such an excellent product. My daughter and son-in-law have travelled to Haiti several times and reported that the conditions there are simply horrible. Thank you to Ms. Krabacher's organization, the Mercy & Sharing Foundation, for the humanitarian work you are doing there.
As to the book itself, "Angels of a Lower Flight" chronicles the journey of a person who eventually finds her life's purpose through helping others. Susie Krabacher was born with many strikes against her, prediminately a chaotic family situation and a sexually-abusive grandfather. She seeks security and significance through external affirmation, eventually rising to a model, actress, and Playboy playmate and centerfold. She discovers that all the glamor and excess leaves her wounded, searching, and emotionally stranded. Through a strange twist of fate, she decides to travel to Haiti with a friend. Upon arrival, she immediately gets to work and forms a feeding clinic. The work in Haiti eventually becomes her life's work, and she forms the Mercy & Sharing Foundation, which has grown today to include orphanges, schools, and medical clinics.
Ms. Krabacher's story is a satisfying and an extremely quick read. It leaves you thinking and wondering about life's mysteries much longer. A single chapter, chapter 19--titled "One Child"--is worth the price of the book alone. In this chapter, Ms. Krabacher poignantly describes the plight of just one of her orphans, a young boy with a heart condition named Ashley. She tells the story straightforwardly, not exploitingly or carelessly. I won't tell you how it endds, but I will say that Ashley's story reaches straight to the heart. There are so many needy children around the world, and sometimes we can get lost in the sheer numbers. But this chapter puts it all in context--each person is important and valued. This seems to be Ms. Krabacher's overall message in life.
I highly recommend this book.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreaking, haunting, beautiful story of an angel on earth..., January 28, 2008
Although the words of this story may make for an easy read, the thoughts that those words provoke, and the places they take your mind are anything but. I constantly found myself literally having to put this book down in order for my brain to process the haunting events in Susie Scott Krabachers' story.
In many ways "Angels of a Lower Flight" is like two books in one, the first details Susie's turbulent childhood and then her fast living Playmate days where every physical manifestation of success was hers for the taking. The second, which takes place after she marries her husband Joe, is a no holds barred descent into hellish conditions of Haiti and her efforts to rescue the broken and abandoned children there.
The journey of her life in Haiti that Susie carries the reader through is truly the stuff of nightmares. She is unflinching in describing failure, both hers and that of the country around her. And yet even in the book's darkest parts, such as when she is forced to pay bribes at the morgue to recover the worm ridden bodies of the children she tried to rescue - or the simple burials in Styrofoam crates of little shattered bodies with the touching message, "In this world you were loved," one can't help but feel in a strange way simultaneously uplifted. That for these tiny discarded souls, to be loved so much during their short time on earth is beyond what we have words to say.
But "Angels of Lower Flight" is filled victories too. Thousands upon thousands of children have been helped by Mercy and Sharing, the organization Susie founded in Haiti to feed, shelter and educate them. The sometimes clever, sometimes miraculous ways that she and her team have found to circumnavigate the volatile, dangerous and unpredictable nature of Haiti makes for an electrifying, thrilling story.
However in the end what I found so powerful, so inspiring about this book, was the way that Susie points a way for all of us to make a difference in this world. Because of her raw honesty you can see that even that even though her actions are heroic, even angelic at times, through it all she remains deeply human, up against the same challenges and limitations shared by us all. And yet by using her footsteps as a guide, all of us are capable of being heroes, and perhaps even angels, on this Earth.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Incredibly touching, January 2, 2008
Susie grew up in hillbilly-land in an abusive family, and aged much faster than she should have had to. When she was offered a chance to become a Playboy Playmate, she jumped at it---the money and perks gave her a chance to escape her life. Unfortunately they led her to another tragic life of drugs and abusive men.
Finally she got out. She took on little jobs to pay her way and get a divorce from her con-man husband, and she ended up marrying the lawyer who helped her. One day she took a trip to Haiti to see if she could help the poor people there, and her life changed forever.
Mrs. Krabacher unflinchingly shows us all sides of herself, including the selfish, the foolish, and the hopelessly naive. And oh, how naive she was, at so many points. Yet that same naivete allowed her keep trying in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and although the situation is a continual struggle---there is no finish line to announce "she succeeded!"---her organization now cares for more than 3,000 children in Haiti.
Make no mistake---this is an incredibly hard book to read, and the images it leaves in your mind will haunt you after you're done reading it. The living conditions and depth of corruption in Haiti are so deplorable it's almost impossible to imagine. The level of religious conviction Mrs. Krabacher displays might also be uncomfortable for non-religious readers; at one point I put the book down for a bit after she argued that voodoo was behind many of the evils in that country. I'd argue that it's the people who misuse a religion in order to gain power who are at fault.
That aside, however, I can see that it would take deep conviction and yes, even unflagging naivete, in order to experience the setbacks she has and keep going. It's amazing to read about her work, and the bright spots of hope and happiness within it.
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