Allison Pataki's Beauty in the Broken Places is a memoir of love, faith and resilience. A beautifully written memoir of the strength of the human spirit and a loving relationship. 5 stars all the way. Put this one on your #TBR list. It will inspire you and move you to tears. ( )

Alli and Dave had it all, she a writer and he a resident. They were 6 mos pregnant and headed to a well deserved vacation. Then the unthinkable happened, Dave suffered a stroke in mid flight.

This book is beautifully written by Alli about their journey. She uses letters she wrote to her husband as they were battling thru the emergency landing and devastating diagnosis to rehab and birth and navigating their new normal.

Ms. Pataki’s writing is fluid and her emotions are raw, so honestly written. I have never read her writings before, but I look forward to reading her previous books. This book is about love and loving, faith without preaching, family and friends. This book should be a must read for couples contemplating marriage to see marriage vows at work.

Thanks to NetGalley for this book. All opinions are my own. ( )

They were only married for a little more than a year when Pataki's husband had a stroke on an airplane and their lives changed forever. The flow of the book was interrupted by chapters about their courtship and early marriage, which made it less engrossing. Not one of the best memoirs I've ever read, but how she dealt with her new reality was moving. ( )

Rating: 2.5

On June 9, 2015, historical novelist Allison Pataki—who was then five months pregnant—and her husband, Dr. David Levy, were en route to Hawaii. Dave was about to enter the fourth year of his orthopaedic surgery residency at Chicago’s Rush University, and he and his wife were taking a much-needed break to recharge. He had been driving himself hard for years—since first entering medical school, in fact—and typically put in 20-hour days. Recently, most of those days had been spent seated at a desk engaged in an intensive independent study/research project. The sedentary nature of that work may have had some impact on his circulatory system and what was to occur on the plane that evening.

Sometime around sunset, as the aircraft flew over the American midwest, Dave nudged his dozing wife awake, reporting that he couldn’t see out of his right eye. The pupil was significantly dilated and unresponsive to light. Airline staff were alerted, and medical personnel who happened to be aboard the plane attended Dave who quickly fell unconscious. A half hour was spent attempting to revive him before the plane made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota. Transferred by ambulance to a nearby hospital, Dave was found to have suffered a devastating ischemic stroke, not the hemorrhagic kind that typically affects younger people, from which they can recover—though it’s an arduous process. A couple of anatomical variants in Dave’s heart and brain, in combination with his recent inactivity, meant that a blood clot in his leg which would normally have ended up in the lungs (likely causing minimal harm) instead made its way to his brain. It occluded the major blood vessel to the thalamus, the brain’s critical central sensory switchboard, which determines where incoming signals need to be routed. Not having received vital oxygen, the tissue there was now dead.

Within 24 hours Dave did wake up in the Fargo hospital. He did not suffer the motor deficits or paralysis so commonly seen with stroke patients, but he was seriously cognitively impaired—suffering amnesia and losing executive function (the ability to plan and initiate actions). He was also extremely sleepy, and, because of cranial nerve damage, unable to move his eyes. Because this kind of insult to the thalamus is so rarely seen in cases of stroke (a 2016 paper in the Annals of Neuroscience suggests such damage occurs in only .6 % of ischemic strokes), there was limited medical literature on the subject—as Dave’s father, a neurologist, and his brother, Andy, a cardiologist, quickly learned. No one knew how Dave would fare long term. The fact that he had survived such a catastrophic cerebral vascular accident at all was attributed to his youth, fitness, and good diet.

In recent years there has been a fair bit of talk about the plasticity of the brain, the ability of some areas to compensate for parts that have been irrevocably damaged. Pataki points out, however, that plasticity becomes more limited as a person ages. Dave was only 30 when his stroke occurred, still young enough for there to be hope that his brain might compensate for and adapt to the injury. Furthermore, in his pre-stroke life, he had been “very high-functioning with an above-average number of neurons firing to do his work as an orthopaedic surgeon,” “fit and strong” and “highly engaged in a rich and complex life, full of family and friends and activity.” Had his traumatic brain injury occurred a year or so later, his deficits would have been greater. If the stroke had occurred when Dave was 35, it is unlikely he would have survived at all.

The chapters in Pataki’s book alternate between the past (the story of the couple’s relationship, which began when both were students at Yale) and the time of the stroke and its aftermath. The memoir also includes some lovely photographs as well as snippets of the laptop letters Pataki began composing to Dave from the beginning of his ordeal. These letters provided a way for the author to converse with the husband that used to be and also served as records of the passing days. For the most part, the excerpts included in the book are judiciously short (until the conclusion, where an arguably unnecessary final letter in its entirety is attached).

Many of the details in the book underscore the fact that the author is a child of privilege. The daughter of a former governor of New York State, Pataki appears to have had every advantage in life. Unfulfilling and stressful work as a news writer in her twenties, for example, could be left behind for six months in Paris. Her aunt’s apartment in the French capital was conveniently vacant at the very point Pataki needed time to take stock of her life. When she returned to the U.S. and was no longer part of the TV news business, she got a job in her prominent father’s clean-energy company. She also appears to have had a large network of well-to-do, high-rolling friends who were able to fly to assist her in her time of need. As much as privilege helps a person negotiate life’s vicissitudes, however, it doesn’t ensure immunity to them. What I am saying here is that in spite of her immense privilege, Pataki’s distress can still be understood and related to. The thoughts and feelings she describes as she attempts to come to grips with her husband’s traumatic brain injury would likely be experienced by most of us were we to find ourselves in a similar situation.

Pataki’s writing is not stellar; occasionally, it’s overwrought. Generally, though, it is serviceable, accessible, and obviously geared towards a younger, mainstream female audience. Pataki is aware enough to know she had lived a charmed life until the fateful June 9th, 2015 flight. She writes about an essentially sunny 11-year relationship with Dave; his marriage proposal—on bended knee, of course; the custom-designed ring he proffered; the four-leaf clovers the two found at the time of their engagement, and their large and elaborate wedding. Some women might enjoy reading about this kind of thing, but I’m not one of them. Additionally, terms like the repeatedly used “babymoon” (Pataki’s word for a romantic holiday taken when pregnant) appear in the book. Again: a word such as this might not bother some, but I felt annoyed every time I encountered it. I understand the author’s desire to mark the contrast between the apparently charmed “before” and the very difficult “after”, but the descriptions of the couple’s first decade unfortunately read like stereotypical scenes from chick lit.

For me, the sections that relate to the stroke made for better reading. Emotions here are more complex, conflicted, and credibly articulated. Pataki is also able to movingly describe the many kindnesses that were extended to her and her husband in the course of their ordeal—sometimes by complete strangers. For instance, after the ambulance had delivered her husband to the Fargo hospital, an EMT lingered and passed her a wad of twenty-dollar bills, telling her simply: “We collect a fund for the family members . . . for moments like this.”

Pataki describes the life she lived, including the progression of her pregnancy, as Dave recovered from his stroke—moving from the hospital in Fargo to Rush University Medical Center, and finally to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the top facility of its kind in the U. S.. Towards the end of Dave’s time in the rehab hospital, he and his family were told that he was expected to make a full recovery. For his wife, though, the greatest challenges were yet to come: when Dave was released from hospital. After spending several months living with and receiving the support of Dave’s parents, the couple went home to their new apartment. Not only did Pataki now have a newborn daughter, but she also had a “new, morphed, entirely unrecognizable version of the man . . . [she] had known and loved.” Having lost higher brain function, Dave no longer. had “the ability to be the self-starting manager of his own life”. Pataki was tasked with the dual roles of being wife and caregiver, and she tells of the serious toll this took on her.

Beauty in the Broken Places is certainly not the best memoir I’ve ever read. However, it is still a powerful testament to love and, at times, an affecting record of endurance and adaptation to adversity. The reader cares about David Levy, roots for him, and appreciates the hardships his family members have faced, including the psychological adjustments that they, too, had to make.

Humans have a fundamental need to turn experiences—particularly chaotic, terrifying, foundation-shaking ones—into stories. Pataki’s narrative of her husband’s life-changing stroke is apparently modelled after Hemingway’s famous, often cited observation: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” which serves as the memoir’s epigraph. That quotation sounds profound and true, but I’m not sure that I believe it, nor am I persuaded that Pataki does. For one thing, the author’s propensity for panic has only increased since June, 2015. “I saw threats everywhere,” she writes of the time after the crisis. To illustrate: one evening as she and her husband set out on a walk (after Dave had been released from hospital), she became frenzied when he reported dizziness and faintness, thinking they must mean another stroke. They were, in fact, only physiological responses to the brightness and heat of a summer evening. Pataki’s later assessment of her situation as an unwanted lesson in endurance rings truer by far than any Hemingway quotation: “This stroke was foisted on my family. It’s not like we chose it and then decided whether or not we could deal with it. We have to deal with it because it’s our reality. And, if it was your reality, you would have to deal with it, too.”

Allison Pataki is a person of some religious faith and there are occasional references to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, angels, miracles, and divine plans. Clearly, her religious beliefs assisted her, but I find that when I encounter the language of traditional Christianity—this particular brand of “faith”—I feel a mixture of amazement, incredulity, and mild distaste. I realize this is unfair of me. Obviously there are all kinds of ways to be in this world and if a traditional Christian belief system supports someone in coping with great hardship and pain, who am I to judge?

In the end, I have mixed feelings about this book. I was interested (and even invested) in Dave’s story, but the writing itself isn’t memorable, and I didn't care for the domestic detail and the back story of the couple’s courtship. I think an editor should have advised the removal of significant chunks of that content. I believe it would have improved the book in the process. ( )

This is a beautifully well written memoir by Allison Pataki. At 30 years old and 5 months pregnant, she and her husband were on their way to Hawaii for a few days of rest and relaxation. Her husband, Dave, was a surgical resident who worked long hours and they both needed a few days away to relax before the baby changed their lives completely. Little did they know when they boarded the airplane, that their lives would be drastically changed before they landed. Dave had a stroke during the flight -an almost unknown occurrence for a young healthy person - and when they made an emergency landing, they weren't sure if he would live or die. Both families went to Fargo, ND. where the plane landed to help with the situation. What follows is such a beautiful story of family and love, friendship and faith that it brought me to tears.

When Allison finds out that Dave has no memory at all and can't retain information, she writes to him every day so that when/if he regains his memory, he will be able to read what happened every day and about her concerns about their lives in the future.

This is a beautiful book that is full of inspiration and love. I am so glad that I read it and highly recommend it.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own. ( )