Only Spring (Tr) [Paperback]

Mark Helprin (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1999

The loss of a child is every parent's worst fear. Gordon Livingston survived that tragedy not once but twice, in successive years. Only Spring, crafted from his journal, traces his son Lucas's courageous battle with leukemia, his extraordinary gift of love, and Livingston's own cycle of faith lost and hope regained. This edition includes a new epilogue by the author.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Psychiatrist Livingston's earlier journals of the death from leukemia of his six-year-old son, Lucas, were first published in the San Francisco Chronicle's Image magazine, where they evoked wide and warm response. In those writings, he detailed the grueling regimen (including a bone-marrow transplant from the author) that Lucas endured, bequeathing to the family a lesson about the power of the human spirit. The current journal details the depth of Livingston's struggle with the loss of Lucas and the earlier suicide of an older son, and with his rage at the medical technology that failed his child. A poignant account of an anguishing life-changing experience.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Gordon Livingston introduces this brutally honest diary as the story of the life and death of his son. It is that, focusing on Livingston's experience of losing his six-year-old son, Lucas, to leukemia; it is also an account of a process of mourning permeated by his gradual realization that "love is not lost even in death." The book focuses almost entirely on the experience of Lucas' death, but the suicide of Livingston's oldest son, Andrew, the previous year, is never far below the surface. It is to Livingston's credit that he speaks not in terms of a triumph over death but of a confidence, gradually won, that love is not lost. This sets the book apart from much of the popular literature of hope and makes it an important contribution to the tradition of tragedy that moves us to humanity in the embrace of mortality. Steve Schroeder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Company (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569246599
• ISBN-13: 978-1569246597
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 4.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #719,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gut-wrenching, December 6, 2004

By 

TG (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Only Spring (Tr) (Paperback)

Sad book, but helped me see what it is that is important in life.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, February 10, 2007

By 

Christine Quiriy (Littleton, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Only Spring (Tr) (Paperback)

Gordon Livingston writes with clarity and honesty about the illness and death of his beloved youngest son, and the aftermath he and his family endured. The book faithfully captures the roller coaster of emotions that accompany the trajectory of illness, as well as the benumbed unreality of such a shocking loss when death occurs. A beautifully brave account of moving into and through a fog of despair, doubt, and guilt, eventually giving way to a ray of hope and light.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars amazing book written from the perspective of a father who has lost his children (one to suicide and one to leukemia)., January 19, 2011

By 

S. Parks (Yorba Linda, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Only Spring: On Mourning the Death of My Son (Paperback)

This book was very well written and very moving. I liked that it was written from the perspective of a father. After reading many grief books I found this to be very different. It's a book I will share with other parents who have lost a child, especially through leukemia.