On the Spring Tide : A Special Kind of Courage [Paperback]

William Rowan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1998

Ten hours after the strike on Pearl Harbor, Japanese planes bomb Clark Field north of Manila in the Philippines. December 10, they return for a massive daylight raid on the strategic naval base at Cavite. December 12, Japanese troops land at Legaspi. Manila falls January 2, 1942. The early chapters of this bittersweet tale are laced with notations from the war diary of teenager Jeanette West as she and her parents face thirty-seven months of constant fear and slow starvation in Santo Tomas prison camp in the heart of the captured city. Part II tracks the impact of that experience on Jeanette's adulthood after she returns home to the United States in 1945. Part III builds a causal relationship between those three lost years of her youth and the fourteen-year siege of breast cancer that takes her life in 1993. This book provides an unusual look at the subtle, sometimes subliminal impact of untreated, prolonged traumatic stress over half a century. Most accounts of this disorder cover a far shorter time frame. A meticulous journal keeper, many of the telling quotations cited in Parts II and III are from handwritten journals that surfaced after her death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"On the Spring Tide is full of moving, tender detail. Its prose is often poetic and uplifting. Above all, this revealing book is the story of two people who, after forty-three years of marriage, find in the long, painful path to one of their deaths, a renewal of the deepest spiritual meaning of love. For those who have faced cancer in themselves or in those they love, the author concludes the book with a summation of ways with which to deal positively with the disease." -- Doreen Gandy Wiley, author

"From the innocence, the optimism, and the simple joy of a childhood in the American community of pre-WWII Manila in the Philippines, On the Spring Tide provides a concise accounting of the lasting fear, uncertainty, and anxiety absorbed into the psyche of teenager Jeanette West during thirty-seven months in a Japanese prison camp. From her war diaries and later journals, husband-author William Rowan tracks the persistent fear of authority, the uncontrollable tendency to freeze in tense situations, the helplessness, and the submission that she and he believed contributed to her early death from breast cancer." -- Marita Hayhurst, Ph.D., Psychotherapist

"I could not put [the book] down once I started reading it, as I felt drawn into a vortex of such profound love and suffering and perseverance, and, as the subtitle states, 'a special kind of courage.'" -- Eva Anna Nixon, author

"The final failure of [her] immune system could well be attributed to her difficulty in coping with overwhelming feelings of terror, rage, and helplessness that were imprinted when she was incarcerated in a World War II Japanese prison camp. The author reveals empathy and affection in his efforts to understand the problems his wife encountered socially, emotionally, and finally physically in her effort to deal with unresolved traumatic stress. The book will appeal to those...interested in possible emotional and physical reactions to extreme stress in the absence of therapeutic intervention." -- Margaret Harrigan, Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist

From the Publisher

Early reviewers describe this book as a gripping story, hard to put down--a fascinating amalgam of memoir and self-help. After a well-documented, fast-paced account of the little-known plight of several thousand Americans, trapped in Manila during World War II, author-husband Rowan moves on to illustrate from Jeanette West Rowan's journals and letters how most of the great, exciting emotional challenges of her adult life were impaired by the legacy of that war experience. It was a legacy that interfered with her job success, handicapped the dimensions of her love, and constrained the confidence with which she tried to pilot her children through most of life's most troubling waters. This is a tale of what went wrong. It carries an important message for those haunted, often from childhood, by unresolved conflicts while striving to find happiness in a complex and impersonal world. Sometimes, knowing what went wrong is the surest way to get things right.

Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Cenografix; 1 edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966286049
• ISBN-13: 978-0966286045
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,810,815 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly convincing look at cancer and traumatic stress., August 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: On the Spring Tide : A Special Kind of Courage (Paperback)

This book is a highly personal and terribly moving look at therelationship between profound stress and cancer/cancer treatment. Theauthor tells the story of his wife, Jeanette Rowan, who was a prisoner of war for three years in Manila during World War II. In late mid-life Jeanette developed breast cancer that ultimately proved fatal. While never stooping to vilify the physicians who cared for her, the author does a wonderful job of using Jeanette's experience to set forth some interesting questions about what the optimal approach to cancer treatment might be for someone who had been so systematically, traumatically, and completely stripped of control during her formative years. William Rowan writes beautifully as Jeanette's husband and helpmate, and his writing is wonderfully informed by his own professional understanding of microbiology. *On the Spring Tide* would be very valuable for cancer patients, for their friends and families, for oncologists, and for therapists. Highly recommended!