Humbled!
How can you not be humbled by a review like this one:
FIVE STARS: 5.0 out of 5 stars Intense, Honest, Inspiring, December 6, 2012
By Tommy Gualt - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: KILLING CANCER (Kindle Edition)
Killing Cancer is a first-person account of cancer survival - or better said, cancer mastery. This book takes you through everything: discovery of the problem (twice!), the fear and the doubt, and finally the resolve and the wherewithal to get the job done. In what could have been a gloomy meditation on suffering, L. J. Martin treats cancer like a call-to-adventure and we watch him face every obstacle with courage, dignity, humor and wit.
Although survival serves as the basic theme of the book, Martin supports it with a kind of Western-hero mythology. He knows the genre well, so in some sense, cancer is the bad guy who has rolled into town and Martin the reluctant, but more than capable Sheriff. His personal story includes a faithful heroine in the form of his wife, and his portraits of the doctors and other patients are filled with human moments, telling dialogue and repartee.
The writing style is wonderful. Within a few pages, you feel like you've been reading the author for years. The voice is strong and I don't think I'll ever forget the joke about the retiree who decides to go to law school.
The book made me feel differently about cancer, particularly since I've come to an age where I've come to see two friends depart under its spell. I felt that they were almost victims of the medical system first, and only after that, of the cancer. But Martin shows how many possibilities exist for a person willing to navigate, if not bend the system to his or her purposes. And in this way, he is kind of like the lone outlaw himself: good at heart, but with the knowledge that if he doesn't take the bull by the horns and find the right sawbones on his own, no one else will.
The most intense scenarios in the book were also the scariest. The confinement and claustrophobia of being under the "death ray," as Martin refers to radiation-therapy are exquisitely described. You feel so much for the author that he makes you wish Killing Cancer really were a fiction instead of a biographical rendering of his race to kill cancer.
This book sets out to give a frank account of what it means to discover cancer and then take the initiative to target a cure. I therefore highly recommend this book to anyone who has heard the word cancer, whether or not it has touched their own lives or the life of a loved one. When the evil C does come around - and for nearly all of us , it eventually will - you're going to want to have L. J. Martin's voice of truth and inspiration close at hand.
FIVE STARS: 5.0 out of 5 stars Intense, Honest, Inspiring, December 6, 2012
By Tommy Gualt - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: KILLING CANCER (Kindle Edition)
Killing Cancer is a first-person account of cancer survival - or better said, cancer mastery. This book takes you through everything: discovery of the problem (twice!), the fear and the doubt, and finally the resolve and the wherewithal to get the job done. In what could have been a gloomy meditation on suffering, L. J. Martin treats cancer like a call-to-adventure and we watch him face every obstacle with courage, dignity, humor and wit.
Although survival serves as the basic theme of the book, Martin supports it with a kind of Western-hero mythology. He knows the genre well, so in some sense, cancer is the bad guy who has rolled into town and Martin the reluctant, but more than capable Sheriff. His personal story includes a faithful heroine in the form of his wife, and his portraits of the doctors and other patients are filled with human moments, telling dialogue and repartee.
The writing style is wonderful. Within a few pages, you feel like you've been reading the author for years. The voice is strong and I don't think I'll ever forget the joke about the retiree who decides to go to law school.
The book made me feel differently about cancer, particularly since I've come to an age where I've come to see two friends depart under its spell. I felt that they were almost victims of the medical system first, and only after that, of the cancer. But Martin shows how many possibilities exist for a person willing to navigate, if not bend the system to his or her purposes. And in this way, he is kind of like the lone outlaw himself: good at heart, but with the knowledge that if he doesn't take the bull by the horns and find the right sawbones on his own, no one else will.
The most intense scenarios in the book were also the scariest. The confinement and claustrophobia of being under the "death ray," as Martin refers to radiation-therapy are exquisitely described. You feel so much for the author that he makes you wish Killing Cancer really were a fiction instead of a biographical rendering of his race to kill cancer.
This book sets out to give a frank account of what it means to discover cancer and then take the initiative to target a cure. I therefore highly recommend this book to anyone who has heard the word cancer, whether or not it has touched their own lives or the life of a loved one. When the evil C does come around - and for nearly all of us , it eventually will - you're going to want to have L. J. Martin's voice of truth and inspiration close at hand.
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Novelists...A Pair, L. J. & Kat Martin
With 85 or more novels and non-fiction works between us, I guess you could say we're novelists/writers. My wife is NYT best-selling, internationally published Kat Martin, whose romantic suspense novel
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