Memoir Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

On the Margin of the Sky by Dee Plecic

Dee Plecic’s autobiographical account of life in a war-torn city presents a world where racism and religious tyranny gradually replaced multiculturalism and tolerance is an amazing tale of one woman’s endurance.

In 1992, the city of Sarajevo, the capital of the Balkan country Bosnia and Herzegovina, fell under siege in the Bosnian War. The center of a multi-ethnic, multi-national power struggle among Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnians erupted, bringing the term “ethnic cleansing” into modern-day vocabulary. The author lived in Sarajevo during much of that time, and describes the daily conditions in harrowing detail: snipers firing on people getting water at […]

SPR2018-07-05T12:41:04+02:00July 2nd, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

From Hell to Happiness by Christopher Cooper

Sorrow and hope are equally mixed in From Hell to Happiness: How to Heal When Your Loved One Is Terminal, an inspiring memoir about life with a cancer sufferer by Christopher Cooper.

Cooper and his wife Jenn were enjoying a happy, successful life in their early 30s, with two sons and good career prospects. Then Jenn was diagnosed with a serious form of cancer and the long-term outlook was grim: even with heavy chemo treatments and surgery, she might likely have a fatal recurrence of the disease.

Cooper describes his day-to-day struggles: how to tell the boys what was […]

SPR2018-06-19T09:31:44+02:00June 19th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Health Book Reviews, Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

Please Stay by Greg Payan

Please Stay: A Brain Bleed, A Life In The Balance, A Love Story by Greg Payan tells the story of the random and almost fatal brain aneurysm suffered by the author’s wife, Holly, a 39-year old college professor, showing life’s fragility, but also its potential for great strength.

The book is touching and engrossing, and much more than a memoir of an illness. Constructed through actual email correspondence, the reader is unaware just what might happen next, offering a harrowing but compelling account of this tragic experience. Woven together with Greg’s own heartfelt recounting of that time in his life, […]

SPR2018-06-15T10:06:10+02:00June 15th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Health Book Reviews, Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

The Traps That Satan Laid by Danica Ked

Australian author Danica Ked chronicles the demonic visitations that filled her life as she battled with schizophrenia in The Traps That Satan Laid: Overcoming the Devil and Other Demons in the Power of Jesus Christ.

At age seven the author began to have seizures and blackouts. By her teens she began exploring a “daydream world.” Satanic beings threatened to kill her, tempted her with lust, or overwhelmed her with secular influences. Yet she often heard hymns or the voice of God, who several times saved her, she believes, from sin or death. She was once consigned to a locked […]

SPR2018-06-15T09:29:19+02:00June 15th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Religion Book Reviews|

The Fog of Faith by Dr. Leona Stucky

In an emotionally charged memoir, The Fog of Faith: Surviving My Impotent God, author Dr. Leona Stucky suggests that religion may indeed offer hope, though not always in the ways we expect.

Raised in a Mennonite farming community, and one of seven children, the author began questioning religion in her late teens. Her loving mother contracted MS, becoming wheelchair-bound, and her father struggled to cope without his wife’s participation; farm work was grueling, and money was scarce. Stucky tried repeatedly to escape her abusive and threatening boyfriend, discovering that the law often sided with her abuser. She felt hopeless, […]

Barbara Scott2018-05-09T10:16:12+02:00April 4th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Religion Book Reviews|

Beyond Borders by Ngozi Iwuoha

Beyond Borders by Ngozi Iwuoha is a touching story of belonging, identity, and family. Borders can separate us and time can keep us apart, but what keeps us together, as shown touchingly by Iwuoha, is love.

Iwuoha tells the narrative with a distance and breeze that at first might catch the reader off guard, but it is clear the effect Iwuoha intended. By keeping the reader at arm’s length, the reader is able to feel what Valeria feels – almost as if life is experienced from behind a pane of glass – clear yet detached and devoid of some vital […]

SPR2018-05-09T10:16:26+02:00March 16th, 2018|Categories: New Releases|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Confessions of a Bar Brat by Judith A. Boggess

Growing up too fast is a reality that many people must face, but for Judith Boggess, the author of Confessions of a Bar Brat: Growing Up in Rosendale, New York, adulthood was forced on her at a particularly young age. Falling asleep to the raucous sounds of a bar beneath you isn’t ideal for the maintenance of childhood innocence, and this memoir tells the visceral, and often disturbing truth of what it was like growing up in that strange place during a tumultuous time.

Boggess is an unflinchingly honest narrator of her own life, depicting the constant challenge of […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2018-05-09T10:16:33+02:00February 14th, 2018|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: HARDBARNED! by Christopher J. Driver

In Hardbarned!: One Man’s Quest for Meaningful Work in the American South, an amusing and insightful memoir by Christopher J. Driver, readers are invited to commiserate with a hardworking American in a tough world, trying to pursue the happiness of writing over potential riches doing anything else.

Before this book was born, Driver spent years staring down some of the hardest questions of the last generation, namely: What am I supposed to do with this degree? What do I want to do with my life? Am I ever going to find a job that makes me happy? While these […]

John Staughton, Senior Reviewer2019-02-11T09:36:08+02:00December 14th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews|