Beauty in the Broken Places: A memoir of Love, Faith and Resilience by Allison Pataki – 272 pages
Book Blurb:
Five months pregnant, on a flight to their “babymoon,” Allison Pataki turned to her husband when he asked if his eye looked strange, and watched him suddenly lose consciousness. After an emergency landing, she discovered that Dave—a healthy thirty-year-old athlete and surgical resident—had suffered a rare and life-threatening stroke. Next thing Allison knew, she was sitting alone in the ER in Fargo, North Dakota, waiting to hear if her husband would survive the night. When Dave woke up, he could not carry memories from hour to hour, much less from one day to the next. Allison lost the Dave she knew and loved when he lost consciousness on the plane. Within a few months, she found herself caring for both a newborn and a sick husband, struggling with the fear of what was to come. As a way to make sense of the pain and chaos of their new reality, Allison started to write daily letters to Dave. Not only would she work to make sense of the unfathomable experiences unfolding around her, but her letters would provide Dave with the memories he could not make on his own. She was writing to preserve their past, protect their present, and fight for their future. Those letters became the foundation for this beautiful, intimate memoir. And in the process, she fell in love with her husband all over again.
My Review: 5 stars
Beauty in the Broken Places was a ride through hell and back as Allison Pataki shares her emotional journey in the aftermath of her husband’s stroke. I’ve always been a fan at Pataki’s quick paced historical fiction novels such as The Traitor’s Wife and Sisi. In this non-fiction memoir, the reader sees that her craft for the written word is genuine. She can make both non-fiction and fiction easy to read, very relatable and completely captivating.
While I find most memoirs to be insightful, painfully honest and interesting, this one covered those bases plus an added sense of Chicago’s familiarity. I learned a lot about our muscles and the mysterious of the brain and what can make them heal. I also found comfort in the author’s assurance that prayer acted a bit as a safety net as she sat by her husbands for weeks on end. I’ve always believed in the power of prayer, but reading this was an added assurance.
This memoir is ultimately a love letter to the author’s husband, a therapeutic means to deal with what was happening and a gift to share with readers everywhere.
Quotes I liked:
A life full must inevitably come with its challenges. But it also means a life full of love and loved ones. A life full of gratitude for both the beauty and the brokenness.”
-Choose to be in your life, to be in your marriage, every single day.”
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