Customer Reviews

Losing Jonathan

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This is a fine book, well-written and heartfelt. The death of a young adult child, according to Darwin (who experienced this) is the hardest of all life's hard things. Worried parents of troubled children will have to ante up some gumption to read it. Non-Jews will envy the Waxlers' faith in their tradition, which seems to come from the inside, unmediated by a pastor's instructions or by the stiff martini resorted to by lonesome predestinarians. English majors and professors will be reminded of the deeply moral underpinnings of their vocations. People without children, once visiting this terrible story, will understand their friends with children better than they may understand themselves. Parents will see their children as never before, vulnerable in a hard world, today in an unnecessarily hardnosed American version of it. For parents who have lost a child, this book and the strength of this family may offer consolation-but the Waxlers advise never to give advice to people in this terrible position.

Losing Jonathan is a beautiful, heartbreaking, story of loss, love, and hope. Linda and Bob Waxler have powerfully told the story of their journey to hell and back while giving those of us who have lost a child hope for tomorrow. We highly recommend this book to any parent struggling with grief, regardless of how you lost your child or how old that child was. It also contains wonderful advice for those who are struggling with how to support anyone who has lost a child.

Soul-wrenching and life-changing. Robert and Linda Waxler, with their incredible faith and love for their son, find a way to articulate what it means to be a parent. Through their loss and subsequent struggle to survive it, Robert Waxler beautifully and powerfully gives us a much greater awareness and consciousness of our own love and committment to our children. This book also drills home the absolutely terrifying reality that everyone's children are vulnerable to the dangers of drugs. I knew Jonathan personally and went to school with him throughout high school. He was an intelligent, witty and extremely nice guy. He was one of those people that everyone liked and assumed would be a success in life. The face of a potential addict is every child - not just those who had a hard childhood or who were unloved. Jonathan was loved and the Waxler's ability to give us the gift of his and their story is possible because of the power of that love. Read it and become a better person and parent.

This book gives the reader a sense of the wonders of Jonathan - the aliveness and excitement of his life and the positive effect he had on everyone he touched. Through the eyes of his mother and father you see beyond his terrible struggle to the light that glowed around him.

Losing Jonathan is a great read of those who have suffered the loss of a loved one to drug addiction. Everyone grieves differently and for varying amounts of time; this is a fact. However, this book allows the reader to better understand the male means of grieving. Our society has made too many men feel that they must be the strong ones and thus many, who are deeply in the grieving process, seem stoic even unfeeling in their behavior. Men are not as demonstrative as women, but, are going through the same horrible grief process. The couple's remaining son's letter and growth out of this tragedy is not only uplifting, but offers positives that can come out of devastation. Although these horrific losses will never be totally gotten over since we feel like a part of our heart is gone, this book does show that although those left behind will struggle, positives can come out of the tragedies even adding purpose to our lives.Losing Jonathan

I was so fortunate to sign up for a freshman English class with Prof. Waxler many years ago. It changed my direction and shaped my life.

Now so may years later, I read with interest, joy, and sadness, the story of his family life, and especially that of Jonathan.

How generous for him to share his heartbreak over losing his son to heroin and how puzzling it was to me to think of this open-minded, easy going spirit to end up in the middle of this story.

Once again, though, Professor Waxler has taught me. Please read this book.

After losing my cousin last month to a heroin overdose, I have struggled to find a book that could help me cope with the sudden loss. Losing Jonathan not only provided me with answers to questions I had, but also proved to be a great source of comfort and strength for my family and I.