Customer Reviews

Letters from a Distant Shore (LaurelBooks)

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Hope is something no mother can ever be short of. "Letters from a Distant Shore" is a memoir from a desperate mother as she faces the terror of her own son afflicted with a brain hemorrhage and in a coma. Blended with her own memoir and letters to others and those who supported her, she tells a riveting story of a mother who never gave up and inspires others to do the same. Touching, "Letters from a Distant Shore" is not a read to be missed.

Letters from a Distant Shore, Marie Lawson Fiala's debut page-turner, pulled me through its 300 pages in a day. The author's journey is worthwhile, taking us through an excruciating three-month ordeal begun as her thirteen-year-old son suffers a sudden cerebral hemorrhage due to a deep, hidden defect. In the process she projects the stories of key family players, with Jeremy's health crisis as lens.

The true story, which ultimately ranges over years with the later ones aptly truncated, was likely not penned for financial gain. Fiala and her husband of (now) twenty-six years have secure jobs in the legal and financial sectors, respectively. So the reader surmises that Fiala wants to do some thinking and thanking, and to sow some seeds of faith so others might tap the power of concentrated consecrated prayer as did her family. By her reckoning, prayer saved her son's life, and while perhaps occupational shyness confines the comments of the medical professionals, they can muster description of the lad's recovery as "miracle," "unusual" and so on.

Fiala seems straightforward about her shortcomings, doubts, and near-constant fears, hence this book is about redemption. But it also records an achievement, a global team triumph. These two aspects alone would make the book compelling, but Fiala's lush, poetic use of language makes it a bittersweet delight to drink in. And imbibe, splash, swim in -- anything one can think of doing in or on liquid is applied metaphorically and un-self-consciously on almost every page -- one of the book's charms. Indeed, Jeremy's problem is first manifested in days of excess fluid in his brain, and at tale's end we are above the waters of Maui.

The redemption aspect says: "My faith was tested, so might be yours. Try God (but don't "test" Him/Her). It doesn't matter what brand your beliefs are. God matters." Fiala of course doesn't end up walking on water, but she still has her son despite well-informed and -intended predictions of the worst.

Her doubts redeemed, Fiala emerges a stronger, humbler person. The thick vein of motherhood running through the story -- as when Falia refers to herself as "Tiger Mom" -- brings to mind the recent publication of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" [...], the supremely confident and very secular stereotyping of Chinese Mothers which has met with such controversy very recently. But to this reviewer the only things the two have in common is love of offspring, a tendency toward control, and well-evolved work ethics. The second factor is quite mild in Fiala's case when compared to the more recent book's Yale Law professor mom.

Cynics might be tempted to discount Fiala's message because of at least ten advantages her life brought to the disaster: Religious training and experience, helpful parents, steady and substantial income, two Stanford degrees, intelligence, excellent memory, a stable and durable marriage to a spiritually sophisticated partner, natural beauty, whiteness, blondness, excellent health insurance, flexible employers for her and her husband, Kristor Lawson.

But why should these points of privilege dilute her maternal pain? Who dares to quantify or compare pain, anyway? Where is it written that tales of triumph-over-adversity must spring from slumdog circumstances? A perfect example of this is the current smash film, "The King's Speech", [...] and Fiala's story belongs in the same category.

In King George's case his disability could have cost his country the war, and we might all be speaking German. Fiala's loving, receptive, restorative energy made all the difference for young Jeremy, and the very process was a boon to the spiritual lives of the hundreds involved in prayer for him.

Still, this could suggest a discomfiting existential aspect of the blow suffered by Fiala's family: life would have been simpler had Jeremy died. Grief, yes, but that tapers off over time, though never totally, for a parent. (Been there, done that.) Jeremy's continuing disabilities required superhuman efforts from his parents, therapists, nurses, et al to rehab him, yet one doubts any would say they regret rising to the occasion.

Fiala quotes, and chooses well, a fair amount of scripture, and the ordeal's massive expenditure and effort bring to mind and life Jesus' parable of the lost sheep:

"If a man has one hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, doesn't he leave the ninety-nine, go to the mountains, and seek that which has gone astray? If he finds it, most certainly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray." (Matt. 18: 10-14)

While the Fiala and Lawson seem a practical pair, the story conveys little done for personal convenience. It would be hard to imagine what more the couple could have done for their son: alternating 24-hour shifts at bedside, tending two other children, buying and selling houses, assuming hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. At book's end, one is left with the feeling that this is how God ought to take care of his broken children.

Fiala's actions reflect her frequent communication with a loving intelligence, and I believe her. The dare for non-believers (who might want to dismiss Jeremy's improbable recovery as a coincidence, for instance) is to deny a substantial woman her spiritual bona fides. It would be good sport to see what this seasoned corporate litigator would do if fed such antagonists in debate.

Preemptively, perhaps, she devotes an entire chapter to review of the scientific literature on prayer's measurable, replicable effects on healing and recovery. Perhaps pulling her punches, she never cites a century's worth of affidavited healings through prayer collected by the American-based Christian Science [...] church, nor other denominations' forays into healing. But she was not at all choosey nor parochial (she is Catholic) about whose prayers she'd accept for Jeremy as the buoying group united by her emails expanded across the globe.

And here, is a grand lesson from the book. Remember the 2007 Google-maps-based search for lost pilot [...] Steve Fossett in the American West? Strangers around the world took tiny parts of satellite map-photos and searched for shiny aluminum. Similarly, Planet Hunters [...] has amateur astronomers around the globe searching parts of the stellar sky for evidence of extrasolar planets collaboratively since humans have better pattern-recognition ability than most computers. The world will be seeing more of this sort of constructive neighborliness, with technology easing the path.

Fiala's quest is a casebook for focused prayer -- almost like an array of radio telescopes concentrating a signal. It's not the only way to pray for healing, but it saved this boy's life and might do the same for you or someone you hold dear.

Elegant in style, profound in insight, relentless in candor, Marie Fiala's book about how she and her family fought their way back from the catastrophic brain hemorrhage of her oldest son, Jeremy, is a testimony to how God can bring beauty out of ashes in answer to perseverance in prayer. It is a must-read for anyone in the ministry, for anyone suffering through the serious illness of a loved one, and for anyone who wishes to be transported to a distant shore, to a place filled with the grace one may only see through the lens of agony.

I'd heard and read great things about Fiala's heart-wrenching memoir, but nothing had prepared me for how gripping and truly inspiring it is. This profoundly human story is a testament to the the inestimable strength of family, the possibility of enduring the greatest of tragedies and the power of faith and perseverance. Marie Lawson Fiala writes with elegance and grace, and her candor and at times unrelenting honesty shine with the clarity of a someone who has gone through the fire and come out transformed.

This is a beautifully written, thoughtful account of Fiala's son's life-changing accident. What lifts this book beyond the conventional illness memoir is its elegant writing and deep portrayal of the writer's fierce commitment to her son and her faith. This is story of courage and transforming love that never once panders or falls into sentimentality. It's a brave and lyrical book. I cannot recommend it highly enough for any reader who love memoir or top-rate nonfiction.

I loved the way this book was written. The way the author described things was so lovely. The story is so tragic, yet the strength and hope shines through. It reminded me that prayer really does work!

Marie Lawson Fiala's account of her family's collective ordeal in the shadow of her eldest son's aberrant trauma stands apart from other memoirs in its candor and humanity. In her retelling of what amounts to extraordinary trials and sacrifice, physical and emotional, Fiala at no point puts herself on a pedestal but unaffectedly connects to her reader - imaginably as one receptive spirit to another. Synchronous with this open mind is a sentient eye for the reality of medical hierarchy and halts in normality which can accompany such an ordeal. By the end, you are genuinely concerned for the winsome Lawson family, and sighing with cheery relief whenever they have one less cross to bear.

I recommend this work to anyone who has the open mind to consider divine mysticism a fact of life, to anyone who's ever seen a loved one through a depleting crisis, and to anyone who is literate. :)

This book is amazing - an extraordinary combination of lucid analysis and emotionally powerful prose. The author draws you in and you feel as if you are there in the hospital with her, watching over her son. She manages to create a tremendous sense of momentum in a story that involves a lot of waiting. I was impressed with the quality of the writing. Letters from a Distant Shore has an amazing mix of emotion and analysis. It brings the clarity and organization you would wish for in any nonfiction book together with a specific, powerful, personal voice. I hope a lot of people read this memoir. Fiala's discussion of hospital personnel's reaction to her active expression of religious faith is well worth the read all by itself.

We have been programmed to think life should be a story of one accomplishment after another. So we collect awards of all sorts from Scouts to cooking school to certify that we are on a steady climb onward and upward. But this Norman Rockwell version of life doesn't last long. Rather, as Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, "man's story is not a success story." Marie Lawson Fiala's "Letters from a Distant Shore" is a beautifully written account of how she and her family dealt with a life-threatening brain hemorrage suffered by Jeremy, the thirteen year old eldest son. This is a narrative that tells how the normal routines of family life were suddenly thrust aside and replaced by round-the-clock vigils at the hospital by the writer and Kristor, her husband. Life was focused on trying to understand what happened in the recesses of Jeremy's brain. This book is also the record of a mother's fierce advocacy for the best care for her son, once IN CAPITAL LETTERS! This page-turning book leads you through a two year slice of a family's history showing how it responded and changed when faced with a threat of death. Anyone who has a loved one in a life-threatening struggle will find a wise and compassionate friend in this book.

It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction. It can also be heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Marie Lawson Fiala's "Letters From a Distant Shore" is a true story that grabs your heart from the moment you actually feel her son, Jeremy's, world go from that of a normal, happy, loving, and carefree boy to the prisoner of his own body, struck down from a brain hemorrhage, in the blink of an eye. Marie and the rest of her family are crushed from this devastating event, but by no means broken. Marie's words invite us in to watch the making of a miracle by this woman of such strength, love, spirituality, and devotion. We are allowed to see her stumble and fall, only to get right back up again. It is by her sheer will and determination, along with the strong support of family, friends, and a cyberspace world of caring strangers, that brings Jeremy back to life, whole and happy. Her gift for writing makes us see what she saw;feel what she felt. "Letters From a Distant Shore" is a story of a tragedy turned into triumph by a mother's love for her son. It is a journey that renews one's faith in the human spirit and the power of love.