Life's That Way: A Memoir (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beaver, an actor, playwright and film historian, collects a series of riveting, heartfelt e-mails chronicling the courageous cancer battle of his beloved wife, Cecily, from her diagnosis of lung cancer to her death in little over a year. Unafraid to examine their life together and his acting career as a performer on two popular TV dramas, the role of Ellsworth on Deadwood and Bobby Singer on Supernatural, he kept family and friends informed with his nightly online messages of Cecily's deteriorating status and the bittersweet childhood of their autistic daughter, Maddie. The revealing e-mails depict the somber travail of Beaver on the horrific death watch of his wife, and detail the roller-coaster ride of emotion from hoping for a speedy halt to the disease's onslaught to experiencing the dark abyss of loss. After the death of his father during this time, he writes: This year of writing has freed me from the shackles I don't know I could have borne otherwise. While this cancer memoir often chills the reader to the core with pain and frustration, it offers countless reasons to cheer Beaver as a remarkable man, a loving husband and a responsible single parent. (Apr.)
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Review

"To have known and read this man over these years, reveals to me I knew nothing of what love could and should be." --Edward Asner

"When this journal first appeared, I learned to keep a jumbo-size box of tissues at the ready. You will cry-- and laugh--as Jim unwraps his unvarnished heart and soul. It will evoke memories of everyone who ever touched your heart and remind you to talk from your heart to the people who mean something to you." --Russell Friedman, coauthor of The Grief Recovery Handbook and When Children grieve

"Jim Beaver, the laconic character actor best known as the appealing prospector, "Ellsworth," on Deadwood has written a compassionate, funny, searing, and ultimately transcending memoir chronicling a year of tragedy, grief, and survival that would send the strongest of men, even an ex-marine and West Texas preacher's son, to their knees. As Jim puts it, "I'm no Job - though I think we went to the same school." That his story is so compulsively readable, inspiring, and ultimately hopeful is due entirely to Jim's bracing honesty, dry humor, and deeply felt humanity. Read this book, tell your friends about it, and then go hug your loved ones." --Robert Schenkkan, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Kentucky Cycle.

"Life's That Way is a gift of a book and one that will join Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking as a classic exploration of love and grief. It removes the clinical and focuses on the personal, revealing that "there's no end to the new ways one can experience such a cataclysm," and shows that, unbelievable as it is, life does go on. And we go with it. "I can't recommend this book highly enough. It will give you pause to reflect on your own relationships and experiences and to think about what your commitments really mean, and it will remind you that even in the worst of situations, people have a wonderful way of reaching out to help and support each other in astonishingly simple and profound ways. 5 out of 5." --Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog, May 5, 2009

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (April 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399155643
• ISBN-13: 978-0399155642
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #71,892 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Honest, Healing Lessons in Life, Loss, and Love, April 18, 2009

By	Bardicvoice "Mary" (Reston, VA) - See all my reviews

This book was edited from an email journal actor Jim Beaver (Deadwood, Supernatural, Harper's Island) wrote each night for a year in 2003-4 to keep family and friends informed about his wife Cecily's desperate fight against cancer, and after her loss, about how he and his very young daughter Maddie continued on with their lives. There is grief here, together with brutally raw and honest pain, anger, fear, helplessness, guilt, and despair - but there is also joy, laughter, and hope, and most of all, there is love: Jim's love for his wife and daughter, their love for him, and the amazing outpouring of love and help from family, friends, and even strangers who responded to Cecily's struggle and its impact on others.

For anyone dealing with love and loss, this book has hope to offer and lessons in life to teach, all without a word of preaching. If you've loved and lost someone - parent, spouse, child, friend, lover - you've felt what's in this book, and reading it might help bring you healing, if only by letting you know that you are not alone in what and how you feel and by giving you the means and words to talk about it. I'm watching my mother being stolen by Alzheimer's, and this book speaks to me even in the midst of ongoing loss. Read it, and take comfort.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courage, Hope, and Living, April 19, 2009

By	Theresa Anderson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A sweet, heartbreaking, inspiring, and yes funny, slice of life is recorded in the emails of Jim Beaver's Life's That Way. Early in the book, I realized that my preconceptions of the title and the subject were in error. Life's That Way isn't the passive equivalent of "life is like that" and there is nothing we can do. Life's That Way is pointing in a direction and making a conscious decision to not give up, to be anything but passive, and to run or walk and sometimes crawl toward Life again.

For anyone that has experienced an intimate loss, which is most of us, this will be an emotional reading. But the reward is Jim's honesty and bravery in reporting his feelings, feelings that sometimes as survivors we don't even want to admit having, but ultimately connect us through being human. The book is a lovely tribute to the tenacity of spirit of Cecily, Jim, and their daughter Madeline Rose.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life's that way by Jim Beaver, April 25, 2009

By	magoghair "supernatural fan" (Illinois) - See all my reviews

Life's That Way: A Memoir

I thought this book would be sad,but i wasn't expecting the moving love story. It was the most beautifully written,love letter to his dear Pie. It was sad,but uplifting in that no matter how much we grief we still LOVE. It was a true tribute not only to her,but to their love.I know through this book his daughter will gain the greatest insight into what a beautiful woman his dear Pie really was.

It was also very heartfelt in how he dealt with not only the cancer but in being a single parent. I know any parent reading this book will understand the great love and fear he had for his daughter and in his ability to be the parent she deserved.

This book should be in everyone's home!