Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1046795 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 278 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Painful healing from a freak bicycle accident burns at the heart of this collection of lyrical anecdotes by Alaskan poet Shumaker. From the moment of impact with a wild-driving kid on an ATV in 2000, as the author is cycling along a highway in Fairbanks with her husband, Joe, she must find a way back from near-death to a meaningful life. Her work is a combination of diarylike entries made during and after her recovery (she suffered from a skull fracture, small strokes, a collapsed lung and a broken finger) and memories from childhood growing up with a frustrated single mom in Tucson, Ariz. These past snippets reveal her mother's Norwegian farm roots and early, bitter, short-lived marriage to the man who got her pregnant; subsequently, Shumaker, as the oldest sibling, had to care for her two younger sisters and brother as their mother spiraled downward, working low-wage jobs, bringing men home and suffering increasing ill health from asthma. In the present sections, the author, hospitalized on and off as her injury-related ailments recur, has to decide to forgive or prosecute the rough-riding boy on the ATV, who is 17 and grudgingly contrite about the accident. Overall, the past and present sections overlap uneasily and seem to constitute two separate literary enterprises, although Shumaker's prose possesses throughout a limpid serenity. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
In 2000, while out bicycling with her husband on a picture-perfect Alaska day, poet Shumaker was struck by a speeding ATV. She never knew what hit her. This wrenching memoir tells two tales: one, of Shumaker's slow and painful recovery (she endured a series of small strokes, a skull fracture, a collapsed lung, and a broken finger); the other, of her harrowing childhood with a divorced, abusive mother whose greatest service to her daughter was setting an example of what not to do; Shumaker assumed the role of parent to her three younger siblings, shielding them from their mother's promiscuity, among other sins. Shumaker's account of her rehabilitation is devastating, recalling moments in which she couldn't see, couldn't talk, couldn't walk, couldn't breathe. She also ruminates upon the fate of the barely contrite 17-year-old driver who nearly killed her. Details of her upbringing are equally crushing. Shumaker's prose is lyrical and lovely, but the intertwining of the two stories isn't entirely successful. Truly, each deserves its own book. Block, Allison

Review
"A remarkable tribute to the indomitable will to live and love. As memory bubbles up through a mind shaken loose from its linear clock, Peggy Shumaker shows us the route to compassion through the compressed power of language to open new worlds. If this book were poker, it would see your life and raise you one." Judith Kitchen, author of Distance and Direction "Here's the truth of a single life presented in scenes so lyric, so honest, so encompassing, that in reading Just Breathe Normally I felt guided into wakefulness. Peggy Shumaker has rendered a masterpiece. This is the finest memoir I've read in years." Mark Spragg, author of An Unfinished Life

Customer Reviews

Life ... visited and revisited ...
What matters in life directs our responses to events of the moment ...

We never know how we will react to outside stimuli, and when they are life-threatening, our viewpoint and values change ...

Shumaker reflects on life ... what brought her to this point, and how she values her past, and the major influences that taught her how to survive ...

We can see what has become essential to her ... simply being able to recover her life before a careless person wrecked it ...

And what of her past? We also learn how she survived despite pitfalls and hazards ...

With a twist of irony near the end of her narrative, one can only echo her expression of ... " What if ... "

This book makes me want to breathe, this book makes me want to fly.
Just Breathe Normally tells of an accident in the context of a larger life. It makes your own life feel fragile, and wonderful and valuable. It makes you want to kiss the person next to you and throw kisses to yourself. It's a celebration of getting through the tough stuff, celebrating the great stuff, character building, trees and swimming and fabulous nieces who will fight off anyone for you, and husbands who care for you and your own inner wild strength. Peggy Shumaker captures in each small chapter a small piece of life like a raindrop in the air. A life falls apart, and the writers puts back the pieces, showing us each piece, love, family, bicycling, Alaska, the ocean, Arizona. We feel the sky opening.

A Beautiful and Insightful Memoir
This is a beautiful and insightful memoir. After being injured in a horrific accident, the
author reflects on her life as she recuperates. Between episodes of 'Law and Order' which
she watches incessantly during her recuperation, she peers deeply into her childhood and
adult experiences. I watched 'Law and Order' during a recuperation, too, and I wonder
what it is about this series that helps healing or works to abate the horrible boredom that
accompanies recuperation.

The book is both poignant and brutally honest. Sometimes the writing is so lyrical that I
felt like singing with the words. At other times, it is so brutal that I felt like I'd been hit.
We travel back to the author's Tucson childhood where she survives an abusive and dys-
functional family with resiliency and dignity. She is able to make and keep close friends
and maintain closeness with relatives throughout her life, many of whom are there to sup-
port her after her accident. She describes her loving marriage and her sense of place in
Alaska. She has taught in the University of Alaska's English Department.

I get the sense that the author is a person who does not open up easily but when she
does it is like a flower that blooms suddenly and fully. This is a beautiful book, one that
I will remember for a very long time and that I cherished reading.