I wrote this book review for my original Overeducated Housewife blog on September 20, 2013. It appears here as/is. Edited to add on 8/20/23– Julie Ice died on May 10, 2023.
As I mentioned in my last post, Epinions.com is going through some major changes right now that is going to make posting reviews, especially of self-published books, a big challenge. I like to review every book I read and I have found that the self-published books are often pretty good. They deserve to be reviewed. Hell, I find myself buying them as often or more often than books that have been vetted by big publishers.
So anyway, I just finished Roy E. Ice’s self-published book, Julie: The Courage to Breathe. This book, available in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions, was published in March of 2013. I picked it up in June, when I had apparently gone on a tear buying books about cystic fibrosis. Though I don’t personally know anyone with CF, I have done some reading about this devastating genetic disease. A lot of advances have been made in the past decade or so in understanding and treating cystic fibrosis. Still, it remains a deadly, demanding disease that often kills people when they are very young.
Roy Ice explains that he met his wife, Julie, when they were teenagers. He fell in love with her, even though she had an annoying cough that she couldn’t seem to get rid of and seemed to get pneumonia very easily. She thought she had asthma. So did her doctors, even though when she was as young as five years old, she showed signs and symptoms of cystic fibrosis.
Though Roy and Julie had met when they were in high school, it took a few more years before they dated. Ice married Julie when they still young adults. He’d done a stint in the military and served in Desert Storm/Desert Shield, then came home to Kentucky. Julie still had that irritating cough that would erupt at the most inopportune times. Roy would encourage Julie to stifle it because it often embarrassed him.
One day, about eight months into their marriage, Julie got very sick. Roy took his wife to the hospital, where a doctor tried to diagnose her yet again with pneumonia. Roy doubted that was the case and demanded that a pulmonologist examine Julie, much to the dismay of the internist who had incorrectly assumed that Julie had pneumonia once again. The lung specialist suspected cystic fibrosis and tested her. At age 23, Julie had tested positive for CF. At the time, most CF patients were dead before their 29th birthdays.
In a folksy, plainspoken way, with a generous smattering of humor, Ice writes about what it was like to find out his beloved wife had a deadly genetic disease. Cystic fibrosis is a very difficult disease to live with, though Julie’s case must have been relatively mild up until she got so sick at age 23. Roy had to learn how to pound on his wife’s tiny body to shake loose the thick mucous that forms in CF patients. He also had to learn how to be a good advocate for his wife, standing up to doctors and even leaving against medical advice when they didn’t seem interested in helping her.
When Julie was 41 years old, her body began to wear out. She needed a lung transplant. The fact that she had made it to 41 was, in and of itself, a miracle. But if she didn’t get new lungs, she would die. Ice explains how he and Julie ended up at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and Julie spent about three months waiting for her new lungs. Interestingly enough, Julie’s doctors passed over a number of lungs before Julie finally got them at around Christmas time in 2011. Apparently, a lot of organ donors in Kentucky are smokers.
My thoughts
For a self-published book, I think Julie: The Courage To Breathe is pretty damn good. Ice has an engaging writing style and his love for his wife is plainly evident. However, I would be lying if I said this book, as good as it is, is five star worthy. If I were basing my rating on the love story alone, it would rate five stars. But Ice’s book has a number of typos and editing glitches that weaken it somewhat. At one point, he references that Julie is in the hospital on December 14, 2012, which wasn’t even a year ago. But then a couple of pages later, the date is December 18, 2011. Obviously, 2012 was a typo that whoever was editing didn’t catch.
I read the Kindle version of this book. At the end, Ice includes a few photos of Julie, whose weight, by the time of her transplant, had dwindled down to 61 pounds. He mentions this fact several times, though it’s hard to really see what that means until you see a color photo of Julie post transplant, still looking really gaunt, but managing to smile. There’s another photo of her hooked up to a bunch of machines, but you don’t really get a sense of her physical frailty because she is surrounded by tubes and machines. There’s what appears to be another photo in my version of the book, but apparently it didn’t post properly; instead, there’s a tell-tale white box with a red X in it.
Also, Ice doesn’t give a whole lot of insight into what CF is and what it does to the body. His story is long on anecdotes, but a bit short on facts. I had read Frank Deford’s Alex: The Life of A Child and Anabel and Isabel Stenzel Byrnes’ book, The Power of Two, which is about twins with cystic fibrosis. Those two books were more informative about what CF is, so I already knew about that. Ice doesn’t include as much information about the actual disease, so those who know nothing about CF probably won’t learn much about it by reading this book.
I would love to see this book get reprinted after it’s been read by a good editor who can clean up the typos and glitches. It’s a story well worth reading. I was moved by Ice’s obvious love for his wife and his willingness to see her through such a devastating disease. Moreover, Roy and Julie just seem like a really nice couple. They appear to be people I’d like to know. All proceeds from this book will be donated to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, which is no doubt a very worthy cause.
Anyway, if I were posting this on Epinions, I’d give it a solid four stars. If the editing glitches were cleaned up, I’d give it five. I had a hard time putting this book down once I got started.
I hope you enjoyed reading this review. If Epinions doesn’t clean up its act soon, I may start putting all my book reviews here… or maybe start yet another blog…
As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.
Here’s another reposted Epinions review from May 2008 that I’m trying to save from obscurity. I’m posting it as/is.
You never know what will happen in a relationship, even when it seems to be made in heaven… In her 1986 book Goodbye, I Love You, Carol Lynn Pearson explains what it was like for her to be Mormon and married to a gay man.
When she met her husband, Gerald Pearson, for the first time, Carol Lynn Pearson thought he “shone”. In warm, glowing terms, Pearson describes the man whose charisma had captivated her at a party she attended back in the spring of 1965. Gerald had been telling a funny story about his days as an Army private, posted at Fort Ord. Carol Lynn Pearson enjoyed the story, and yet she was horrified that the Army had deigned to turn this gentle soul into a killer. Later, Carol Lynn had a conversation with Gerald and discovered that he’d just returned from a two year LDS church mission in Australia and was preparing to finish his college education at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. Pearson had already earned two degrees at BYU, both in drama. The two had a lot in common besides theatre and religion. As good Mormons, they also felt the pressure to be married, especially since neither of them was getting any younger. They became friends and started dating.
Gerald continued to impress Carol Lynn with his sense of fun, creativity, and sensitivity. She fell in love with him. He seemed to return her affections. One night, they went on a date to the movies and Gerald’s roommate, Paul, drove. Carol Lynn thought they were going to double date, but Paul never did pick up a female companion. Gerald sat between Paul and Carol Lynn and seemed to enjoy the film. Paul pouted. Gerald told Carol Lynn that he wished they would fall in love and have many children. Not long after that, Gerald proposed marriage. A couple of months after Carol Lynn accepted Gerald’s marriage proposal, he revealed that he’d had relationships with other men. In fact, his roommate Paul was actually his lover. But Gerald promised that he wasn’t gay and he swore that he would never have relations with a man again. He told Carol Lynn that he wanted to have a marriage and a family with a woman. His homosexuality “problem” was over and in the past.
Though Carol Lynn was troubled about Gerald’s revelation, she trusted him and she trusted herself. She also trusted her church, which took the position that everyone was created heterosexual. Though people sometimes got “off track”, homosexuality was a problem that could be solved with enough faith and repentance. Carol Lynn, who by that time had been affectionately nicknamed Blossom by the glowing man in her life, decided to get married.
Carol Lynn and Gerald got married in 1966 and, for awhile, they were very happy. They had four children together and appeared to be devout Mormons who did everything right. Carol Lynn became a successful writer who published books of poetry and plays. Gerald was a good husband and a fine father. He had a talent for the culinary arts and music. But as the years went on, Gerald became restless. He started talking more about his homosexuality, reading the works of Walt Whitman and attending plays about homosexuals. The couple began to have arguments about how people should love each other and found that they could not come to a consensus.
Not long after that, Carol Lynn found out from third party that Gerald was unfaithful to her, having relationships with men. Neither Gerald nor Carol Lynn wanted to split up, so they tried to stay married. But the couple soon found that their differences eventually and inevitably pushed them apart. Twelve years after their temple marriage and the births of their four children, Carol Lynn and Gerald decided to get a divorce.
Even after the divorce, Carol Lynn and Gerald remained great friends. Carol Lynn met Gerald’s boyfriends. Gerald stayed in contact with his children. And when he eventually contracted AIDS in the early 1980s, Gerald came home to die with his friend and ex wife and their children by his side.
My thoughts…
I’m a sucker for a good memoir and Carol Lynn Pearson has written an eloquent one in Goodbye, I Love You (originally published in 1986). As I read this book, I was amazed by how graceful, understanding, and kind she was to her former husband. They truly did love each other. Unfortunately, they could not be married to each other. Carol Lynn Pearson was monogamous and could not share her husband’s love with anyone. And Gerald Pearson loved his ex wife, but he could not share the bond with her that he could have with a man. Naturally, because they were Mormons, their church would not approve of the lifestyle Gerald led.
With heartbreaking honesty, Carol Lynn Pearson describes what it was like to be in her situation. Gerald had contracted AIDS when it was still a very new disease. Carol Lynn explains what it was like to have to prepare their children for their father’s inevitable death. They had figured out that he was gay and accepted it. It hadn’t occurred to them not to love their father, despite his desire for men.
I will warn readers that there are a couple of passages in this book that may be shocking. For instance, Carol Lynn writes about meeting one of Gerald’s friends who had tried to get treated for his homosexuality at a clinic run by BYU. According to Pearson, in the early days of the clinic, homosexual men were literally given shock treatment to try to cure them of their sexual feelings toward other men. Although I had heard about this program before I read the book, I was still somewhat horrified as I read about it. This same friend related a story to Carol Lynn about a young man who had also gone through the shock therapy and ended up killing himself because the treatments did not work. Gerald agreed that he had known many men who had committed suicide because they couldn’t stop being gay. The men had been led to believe by church authorities that they were better off dead than homosexual.
While I can understand on some level that perhaps the church authorities meant well when they advised their homosexual members to repent and “get therapy”, I am also disgusted by it. It makes me sad to think about how many promising lives were snuffed out by suicide because these men had been expected to change their feelings and they found they could not change, no matter how much they prayed, fasted, and repented.
Aside from that horrifying aspect of the book, I found Goodbye, I Love You to be very educational. I also felt a lot of empathy toward Gerald, Carol Lynn, and their children. Because of their belief system, Carol Lynn and Gerald felt they had to get married. I’m sure Gerald really did think he could overcome his desire to be with men. I’m sure he wanted to. When one of the children dramatically declared that she was through with boys and wanted to be a lesbian nun, Gerald told her that if she could be straight, she should. He told her that being gay was difficult and that no one would ever choose it.
Likewise, I’m sure Carol Lynn felt cheated and betrayed. She believed Gerald when he told her he could change. They were sealed in the temple for time and all eternity. When it all fell apart, she was left with their four children and no marriage. As a true believing Mormon, this was not a small issue for Carol Lynn Pearson. Fortunately, people in the church were understanding about the divorce and no one seemed to judge her for it. But she had feared they would.
In any case, Goodbye, I Love You is not a happy tale, but it is one of great beauty, honesty, and tragedy. I admire the way Carol Lynn and Gerald were able to be friends after their divorce. I especially admire Carol Lynn’s ability to come to terms with Gerald’s homosexuality and present their story with such love and sensitivity. I’m pleased to recommend Goodbye, I Love You and give it five stars.
As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on items sold through my site.
You know that old song by Billy Joel? I know it well. It was a hit when I was a young child. The lyrics are timeless. The melody endures. Many of us would love to have a friend or a loved one who takes us just the way we are.
Billy wrote a masterpiece that has stood the test of time.
But is it always best to love someone just the way they are? Are there times when it’s unwise or unhealthy to take someone just the way they are? Obviously, yes, there are. My husband tried to love his ex wife just the way she was until he realized he couldn’t anymore. His own life was at risk by accepting her “as/is”. So they got divorced and he’s much better off for it. I don’t know if she’s better off. It’s not my business, anyway.
This topic comes up this morning after I read an admittedly bizarre “love story” in The New York Times. Adam Barrows wrote an article entitled “I Wanted to Love Her, Not Save Her”. The tag line read, “The first time we spoke, she was so weak she had collapsed. Why did that not alarm me?” When someone uses the word “alarm” in a tag line, you can be sure high drama is about to ensue. I was hooked.
So I read Adam Barrows’ story about meeting his wife, Darla. They were both working at a chain bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota when Barrows came upon his future wife passed out on the floor. Although they had been co-workers, he had never really spoken to her. He just noticed that she was painfully thin.
As Darla’s vision came back, she explained to Adam that she suffered from anorexia nervosa and hadn’t eaten in several days. He asked her if he could get her something to eat. She said no, and asked him to just sit with her for a minute until her strength returned. Adam sat with her and they developed a friendship. As they got closer and eventually “fell in love”, Darla continued to starve herself. Adam did nothing to get her to change her behavior. He writes:
I didn’t try to help her with that. I’m not sure why. It’s as if I accepted her struggle as a given, as a fact of her. I was struggling myself after a recent heartbreak and was trying to teach myself how to do basic things again: to think for myself, to walk properly, to hold myself upright, to sleep and to breathe.
To see her struggle to force down solid food, to watch as she spread a thin layer of butter on a saltine that she would chew to a paste before it would go down (this was her only meal some days) seemed not natural, of course, but also somehow unremarkable to me. I watched her starve and held her while she did it.
Some people might call that enabling. I called it love.
After months of traveling around the United States together, they ended up getting married. They had a son who turned 18 last year and, at this writing, have been together for 23 years. Adam writes that Darla eventually got somewhat better. She ate more and, over the years, put on some weight. He writes that before the pandemic struck, she was actually considering going on a diet, but didn’t end up doing it. While many people have gained weight during the pandemic, Adam writes that he and Darla don’t go to the grocery store much and that has had a “slimming effect”. I’m not sure what that means, but I’ll take him at his word that he and his wife are doing okay.
At the end of his essay, Barrows concludes:
Our married life has not been without conflicts. I have taken her for granted, put my needs ahead of hers, indulged my weaknesses. But I never have regretted the fact that I did the possibly irresponsible thing back then by not acting alarmed about her anorexia, by not pressuring her to do anything about it, and instead just loving her for who she was. She never wanted heroic intervention from me or from anyone else. She triumphed over her issues with food on her own terms and is happy for me to be sharing our story now.
I found this story kind of fascinating. I went to see what others thought of it. Most people seemed to conclude that Adam Barrows is some kind of an asshole. Here’s a screenshot of the first few comments. They are overwhelmingly negative.
Someone else wrote this rather scathing response:
Wow, less the confession of an enabler and more the confession of a narcissistic a-hole with a fetish for damaged, frail women. It’s so quaint to wax poetic about how deathly cold her hand was the time you found her after she fainted. It’s so sexy to talk about riding in the sleeper car with a starving person in desperate need of mental health intervention. You sound like a right tw*t.
I didn’t get that Adam Barrows is a “narcissistic a-hole” just based on this essay. It’s possible that he is one, but frankly, I kind of doubt it. Most narcissists I’ve known don’t have the ability to be introspective about their own faults. Adam openly admits that his wife had a problem. He also admits that he might have enabled her in her self-destructive habits by not insisting that she seek treatment. Some people would say he’s a bad person for not rushing her to a hospital or a rehab center.
On the other hand, there is some beauty in a person who simply accepts a person as they are. I didn’t read that Adam was encouraging Darla to be an anorexic. I read that he didn’t disapprove of her for who she was. He simply loved her. According to his story, she eventually got better. I don’t know how her improvement came to be. Was it entirely through the “kissing” treatment he writes of, or did she ever seek any kind of help? I don’t know… and I’m not sure if that’s the point of this story. It’s an article in the Modern Love section, which focuses on different kinds of love stories.
There are also people out there who consider eating disorders to be a “lifestyle”. I personally don’t agree with that viewpoint at all. But I’m just one person. As I’ve recently mentioned in other posts, there are a fuckload of eating disorders out there that never get any press. Who am I to say that one person’s eating disorder isn’t another person’s lifestyle? In fact, we don’t even know if Darla was ever diagnosed by a physician as having anorexia nervosa. We can only go by Adam’s description of her and her own declaration that she’s anorexic. When I was much younger, I used to go days without eating. I passed out a few times, too. No one would ever think of me as anorexic, even if I sometimes engaged in those behaviors.
I’m inclined to take this essay at face value. It wasn’t intended to be an in depth look at Darla’s eating disorder. It was a story about how Adam and Darla came to be in a relationship. I don’t think there’s enough information in this story to determine what kind of person Adam is. But that’s not stopping some people from judging him. One person wrote:
This is problematic in a variety of ways. The sentence about how Darla was actually considering a diet before the pandemic is particularly disturbing. This diet is apparently supposed to be proof that she triumphed over her anorexia, but it is not. Recovery is not about achieving a certain predetermined weight, it is about rediscovering comfort and joy in your body and the food that nourishes it. The author does not address this at all. He also minutely describes his wife’s eating patterns and ED rituals. The romanticization of theses behaviors is very triggering and could push ED survivors who read this article towards relapse. His wife’s battle with anorexia is ultimately just used as the backdrop for his coming of age story.
The only description Adam includes of his wife’s eating rituals is in a paragraph about how she would spread a thin layer of butter on a saltine cracker and chew it up until it became paste. He writes that some days, that was her only meal, adding “I watched her starve and held her while she did it.” I agree, that last sentence sounds awful on its surface. But looking a little bit deeper, I think it’s possible to see his perspective. It’s practically impossible to save people from themselves. It all comes down to deciding what you– yourself– can tolerate. It sounds to me like Adam accepts Darla as she is. And just based on his essay, I don’t get the sense that he necessarily encourages her to be anorexic. I think many people are making that assumption because he admits that he never tried to force her into treatment.
An argument could be made that a person who is extremely underweight and malnourished lacks perspective. But, unfortunately, when it comes to mental health care, a lot of Americans are shit out of luck. Mental health care is neither easy to afford nor easy to access, especially right now. Moreover, thanks to our civil rights laws, it’s pretty tough to force someone into treatment for an eating disorder. Even if someone is about to starve to death, our laws emphasize self-determination and the right to refuse care. It appears that Adam and Darla may be living in Canada now, as Adam is reportedly teaching in the English department at Carleton University in Ontario. I can’t comment on Canadian laws regarding the treatment of eating disorders or other mental health issues. He makes it sound like perhaps she no longer needs treatment, anyway. Does she need it, having apparently never received it? I honestly don’t know. All I know is what he’s written, and even that is pretty subjective.
One thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that, in the vast majority of mental health situations that don’t involve some kind of biological issue, treatment works best when a person decides for themselves that they will cooperate. When it comes down to it, a person with an eating disorder needs to decide for themselves that they need help. They have to be motivated to get it. Perhaps if Adam had told Darla that he would be leaving her if she didn’t seek treatment, she might have found the motivation to get help. However, it’s my guess that she might have just as easily become resentful and angry about it. She may have seen him as trying to control and manipulate her. A lot of the angry women commenting on this piece would probably fault Adam for that, too. I think a lot of women blame men for most everything.
I told Bill about this piece and asked him what he thought. I know that if he were in this situation, he would have a really hard time watching. He would want to try to rescue. But he also tried to do that with his ex wife and he failed miserably. Eventually, it became too much for him to tolerate and, when she finally dramatically presented him with a divorce ultimatum, he took her up on it. Divorce was not what she had wanted. She was simply trying to be manipulative in a humiliating way. But he got tired of the bullshit and, ultimately, saved himself from her craziness by getting out of the marriage. He’s reaped the rewards and managed to stay alive, too.
Having recently watched a bunch of episodes of Snapped, and having witnessed my husband’s own dealings with a woman who is, frankly, very disturbed, I understand that this is a really tough situation to be in. Not knowing either of these people personally, I can’t judge if what Adam did was right, or if he’s a good person. A lot of people negatively judged Bill and me when I shared how Bill’s story eerily reminded me of an episode of Snapped I watched years ago. It was about a woman named Jessica McCord who, along with her second husband, murdered her first husband and his second wife over custody of their kids. I remember my blood running cold as I watched that episode. I dared to blog about how Jessica McCord reminded me of Ex. I ended up getting a shitstorm of negative armchair quarterback comments from people who wrongly characterized us as bad people. No… we aren’t bad people. We simply didn’t want to end up dead. And I believe Ex was capable of going that far. She threatened to kill Bill on more than one occasion.
Should Bill have tried to get his daughters away from his ex wife? Personally, I think so. In fact, I often encouraged him to try to do something about that situation, even though it wasn’t my decision to make. But, the fact of the matter is, we didn’t have the money or the time to wage a legal battle. It would have been very difficult to convince a judge to grant custody to Bill, especially since the girls didn’t indicate to us that they were unhappy with their living situation. It would have been great if he could have tried to get more equitable custody, but we live in reality. The reality is, it probably wouldn’t have worked. At this point, I’m simply glad he survived, and I don’t apologize for his decision to save himself. His daughters are grown now, and one of them has apparently forgiven him after confirming that her mother is mentally ill. The other remains estranged, but she’s almost 30 years old. She can reach out if she wants to. She chooses not to. As an adult, she has the right to make that choice for herself. Bill loves her anyway.
That’s kind of what I got from Adam’s piece. He loves his wife the way she is. Is it a good thing that he doesn’t press her to get treatment for her eating disorder? I know what most people would think. For me, it’s not so cut and dried. There’s something to be said for a person who loves someone regardless. And despite some people’s potentially erroneous assumptions that Adam prefers his wife “sick”, I get the impression that he had simply determined that he couldn’t be her savior. Moreover, it wasn’t Adam’s role to try to be Darla’s savior, simply because that’s what society deems is correct. What I got from Adam’s story is that he and Darla love each other and, against the odds, their love has survived… and so has his wife. I wish them well.
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
You must be logged in to post a comment.