And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones by Susan Petersen Avitzour -- A Review



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This is my seventh or eighth attempt at what has to be the most difficult review I have ever written.  And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones has a fairly straightforward synopsis.  Susan Petersen Avizour had a good job, a loving husband and seven children that meant the world to her.  Their lives were ones many yearn for--until the day her middle daughter was diagnosed with leukemia.

This book follows Susan and her family through the several years leading up to her daughter's death--and into the aftermath.  Through weekly updates at her church, a blog written five years later, based on these updates and poems written by Timora, we get to see how Timora's life, illness and death impacted not only her family, but those around her.

What is complicated about reviewing this book is finding words to describe pure emotion.  The author holds nothing back in the telling of her story.  You feel her pain, the anguish of feeling that all hope is lost.  You feel her great pride in a daughter that tries to make the most of every minute she has on Earth. 

Words do not flow from the pages of this book.  And Twice the Marrow of her Bones is an exercise in capturing and sharing pure, untainted emotion.  The subtitle is "A Mother's Memoir" and that doesn't come close to describing this book.  The closest description I can come up with is that this book IS a mother's love.

Women everywhere (and men too) will feel themselves in this book.  Even if you have not physically lost a child, every parent fears that chance. As your child moves from babyhood to school and from school to adulthood, you feel a sense of loss for the being they once were.  Take that feeling and multiply it a hundredfold and you can come close to what a parent feels when physically losing a child.

This is not an easy book to read.  You will find the need to step back and get your emotions in check before continuing.  You will have not only the wish, but an undeniable need, to hug your own child.  You may even find yourself having to force yourself to let them go.  In the end, you will feel as though you have been given one of the greatest gifts in existence, a mother's pure, unconditional love.

I am afraid there arent't enough colors on the Rainbow Scale to rate And Twice the Marrow of Her Bones.