Book picks similar to
I of the Storm by Bill Lavender


louisiana-poet
memoir
poetry
american-history

And Then I Met Margaret


Rob White - 2013
    What's most important in each story is the unassuming, ordinary, everyday guru who popped into his life and offered the perfect life-lesson for the moment. Rob shares these very interesting life lessons, which helped him gain insights that proved to be superb starting points for a new life.

The Boy In 7 Billion: A True Story of Love, Courage and Hope


Callie Blackwell - 2017
     A powerful true story revealing a remarkable relationship between a dying son - and a mother that refuses to let him go. At the age of 10, Deryn was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Then 18 months later he developed another rare form of cancer called Langerhan’s cell sarcoma. Only five other people in the world have it. He is the youngest of them all and the only person in the world known to be fighting it alongside another cancer, making him one in seven billion. Told there was no hope of survival, after four years of intensive treatment, exhausted by his fight and with just days left to live, Deryn planned his own funeral. But, Deryn’s desperate mother, Callie would not let him give in. Battling medical errors, impossible odds and years of hardship as the cancer consumed his body and their world, they looked for more answers. After making some startling discoveries and taking massive chances - something began to change… Would their lives as a family ever be the same again?

Something Quite Peculiar


Steve Kilbey - 2014
    Best known as the lead singer and enigmatic front man, songwriter, bassist of The Church, Steve has experienced both amazing international success and all the excesses that go with it, as well as a well known heroin addiction that delivered some very dark times. The Church has been a significant and constant influence on the Australian music industry and readers will be keen to hear from one of the industry's most successful, creative and long-standing key protagonists. Kilbey is Australian rock and roll royalty and for the first time this is his story. Come inside the world of Steve Kilbey singer songwriter and bassist of one of Australia's best loved bands, The Church. From his migrant ten pound pom childhood through his adolescence growing up during the advent of The Beatles, Dylan and The Stones to his early adventures in garage bands and neighbourhood jams. His misadventures with a full time job and a 9 to 5 life and wild adventures with The Church as they conquer Australia and then the world. The tours. The records. The women. And then the heroin addiction which enslaved him for ten long years. Then the two sets of twins he fathers along the way and branching off into acting, painting and writing. From snowy Sweden to a cell in New York City, from Ipanema beach to Bondi, Kilbey stumbles through his surrrealistic life as an idiot savant that will make you smile as well as want to kick him up the arse. After coming out the other side his tale is simply too good not to be told. Narrated with unusual and often pristine clarity we and with much focus on his considerable musical talent.

The Unwelcome Visitor: Depression and How I Survive It


Denise Welch - 2020
    This is my story that you have asked me to tell. Those who suffer from depression will understand and those who don't will hopefully learn how to.'This is the book that Denise Welch wished for as she found herself exhausted and defeated after yet another visit from The Unwelcome Visitor - the name she gives to the episodes of clinical depression she has suffered from over the past 30 years.For so many understanding their mental health is a leap into the unknown, and they are left grappling with the physical and emotional fallout without any guidance or someone to tell them 'you're not alone and you can live a happy and successful life alongside your illness'. Within these pages Denise reveals her ongoing journey from breakdowns to breakthroughs and through self-destruction to self-acceptance.Typically candid, Denise brings her trademark humour and honesty to a conversation that we urgently need to have, and shows readers it is brave and courageous to be open and vulnerable, and you too can take back control.

Gettysburg: A Lovely Summer Morning (Illustrated)


Frank A. Haskell - 2011
    Haskell is one of the most moving, and honest accounts of battle ever written. Gettysburg: A Lovely Summer Morning is a compilation of vintage civil war photos, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and a letter written by Franklin Aretas Haskell, Aide-de-camp to General John Gibbon. Haskell's letter was first published in 1898 as a book entitled The Battle of Gettysburg. Haskell wrote the letter to his brother shortly after his participation in the Battle of Gettysburg. He did not intend for it to be published commercially.

This Side Up


Amy Mangan - 2018
    An inspiration to us all.” –Southern Living This Side Up: The Road to a Renovated Life is a home and garden editor’s story of a life constantly under construction, none by design. Written with candor, humor and grace, Amy Mangan shares her own home tour, but this one deftly sheds light on job loss, financial shame, home displacement, marital discord, illness and caregiving. Faced with one crisis after the next, Amy discovers how to cope, hope and rebuild, finding a new way home to a stronger way of life.

Stronger Than the Dark: Exploring the Intimate Relationship Between Running and Depression


Cory Reese - 2021
    

Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story: A Blind Broadcaster's Story of Overcoming Life's Greatest Obstacles


Ed Lucas - 2015
    He lost his sight forever. To cheer him up, his mother wrote letters to baseball superstars of the day, explaining her son’s condition. Soon Ed was invited into their clubhouses and dugouts, as the players and coaches personally made him feel at home. Despite the warm reception he got from his heroes, Ed was told repeatedly by others that he would never be able to accomplish anything worthwhile because of his limitations. But Hall-of-Famer Phil Rizzuto became Ed’s mentor and encouraged him to pursue his passion—broadcasting. Ed then overcame hundreds of barriers, big and small, to become a pioneer—the first blind person covering baseball on a regular basis, a career he has successfully continued for six decades. Ed may have lost his sight, but he never lost his faith, which got him through many pitfalls and dark days. When Ed’s two sons were very young, his wife walked out and left him to raise them all by himself, which he did. Six years later, Ed’s ex-wife returned and sued him for full custody, saying that a blind man shouldn’t have her kids. The judge agreed, tearing Ed's sons away from their father's loving home. Ed fought the heartbreaking decision with appeals all the way up to the highest level of the court system. Eventually, he prevailed, marking the very first time in US history that a disabled person was awarded custody over a non-disabled spouse. Even in his later years, Ed is still enjoying a remarkably blessed life. In 2006, he married his second wife, Allison, at home plate in old Yankee Stadium, the only time that such a thing ever happened on that iconic spot. Yankee owner George Steinbrenner himself catered the whole affair, which was shown live on national television. Seeing Home: The Ed Lucas Story is truly a magical read and a universally uplifting and inspirational tale for everyone, whether or not you happen to be a sports fan. Over his long and amazing life, Ed has collected hundreds of anecdotes from his personal relationships and encounters with everyone, from kings and presidents to movie stars and sports Hall-of-Famers, many of which he shares in this memoir, using his trademark humorous and engaging style, cowritten with his youngest son, Christopher.

Called


Lisa D. Jefferson - 2006
    "Called" tells the gripping account of 9/11 from her vantage point. She recalls the moment she took the call from Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93, and when she heard the immortal words, "Let's Roll. She remembers the way that her life was transformed vividly when she responded to the call. Jefferson sends a stirring challenge to all of us--whether it comes during quiet obscurity or international adversity, we must be prepared to answer God's call."

A Belfast Child


John Chambers - 2020
    From an early age he witnessed violence, hatred and horror as Northern Ireland tore itself apart in civil strife. Kneecapping, brutal murders, and even public tarring-and-feathering were simply a fact of life for the children on the estate. He thought he knew which side he was on, but although raised as a Loyalist, he was hiding a troubling secret: that his disappeared mother - whom he'd always been told was dead - was a Roman Catholic, 'the enemy'.In a memoir of rare power, John explores the dark heart of Northern Irish sectarianism in the 70s and 80s. With searing honesty and native Belfast wit, he describes the light and darkness of his unique childhood, and his teenage journey through mod culture and ultra-Loyalism, before an escape from Belfast to London - where, still haunted by the shadow of his fractured family history - he began a turbulent and hedonistic adulthood.'A BELFAST CHILD' is a tale of divided loyalties, dark secrets and the scars left by hatred and violence on a proud city - but also a story of hope, healing and ultimate redemption for a family caught in the rising tide of the Troubles.©2020 John Chambers (P)2020 Bonnier Publishing

All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go


Bucky Sinister - 2007
    His love affair with punk comes full circle as he learns to hate it and then learns to love it again. The pieces in this book take us from his Southern roots, his brief stay in St. Louis, and his journey to California on a quest for punk bliss. Sinister finds himself in Oakland, where he gets exactly what he wanted, but it may just kill him. From recounts of specific shows to metaphorical dreams of Abraham Lincoln to the tragic stories of circus elephants, All Blacked Out & Nowhere to Go mixes tragedy and comedy into a book that's louder and faster than any book of its kind.

You Can't Run: The Terrifying True Story of a Young Woman Trapped in a Violent Relationship


Mandy Thomas - 2015
    I knew he would never stop, so I just had to do what I could to survive." Mandy Thomas was just 18 when she met the man who would change her life forever. She was soon under his spell – and then her real nightmare began. Mandy found herself part of a cruel and violent relationship that she couldn’t escape. Until one day he went too far… You Can’t Run is Mandy’s searingly honest and moving true story.

Fragile: Beauty in Chaos, Grace in Tragedy, and Hope that Lives In Between


Shannon Sovndal - 2020
    He thought he was going in with his eyes wide open. Really, he had no clue. Nothing could prepare him for the harsh reality of being a compassionate human and working as an ER doctor. In his emotionally charged memoir, Sovndal examines the tenuous balance between trying to compartmentalize the trauma of tragedy while also preserving his own humanity. With candor and humility, Fragile pulls back the curtain on the ER, a place where Sovndal has learned that universal truths about the human condition can be discovered—if you pause long enough to take a breath. At turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, serious and funny, Sovndal’s memoir is about trying to reconcile the beautiful and horrific tension that makes life so fragile, and how accepting that hard truth opens us up to appreciate life’s most precious moments—which are often the ones most filled with connection, hope, and love.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:SHANNON SOVNDAL, MD, a board-certified doctor in both emergency medicine and emergency medical services (EMS), serves as a physician and medical director for multiple EMS agencies and fire departments. Dr. Sovndal has a wide range of career experience, working in tactical medicine (TEMS) with the FBI, as a team doctor for the Garmin Professional Cycling team, and as a flight physician. As the producer of the podcast Match on a Fire: Medicine and More, he is the founder of 3Hundred Training Group, which focuses on educating and training pre-hospital providers.Dr. Sovndal attended medical school at Columbia University, where he earned the prestigious Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award, and completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at Stanford University. He is also the author of Cycling Anatomy and Fitness Cycling and lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his family.

Stay Tuned: Conversations with Dad from the Other Side


Jenniffer Weigel - 2007
    Stay Tuned is Jenniffer"s story of a father and daughter's journey from materialistic journalists to spiritually attuned spiritual beings--a journey that continues even after his death.During his illness, while Tim turns to alternative treatments like chi gong and reiki sessions, Jenniffer reads Neale Donald Walsch, starts a spiritual diet plan and uses the law of attraction to find free parking spaces. The book takes you on a witty, irreverent trip through popular spiritual beliefs and insights of masters and celebrities, including Don Miguel Ruiz, James Van Praagh and Russell Crowe, as this intelligent, award-winning broadcaster transforms from "cynical daughter" to "spiritual woman."

കാൻസർ വാർഡിലെ ചിരി | Cancer Wardile Chiri


Innocent V T - 2013
    Cancer Wardile Chiri depicts how he managed to escape from the clutches of this deadly disease with the help of medicine, mind power and ofcourse laughter.