GIVEAWAY & REVIEW: Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

Description

“It’s an old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.”

So begins this gorgeous memoir by Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell, a testament to the power of friendship, a story of how an extraordinary bond between two women can illuminate the loneliest, funniest, hardest moments in life, including the final and ultimate challenge.

They met over their dogs. Both writers, Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp, author of Drinking: A Love Story, became best friends, talking about everything from their shared history of a struggle with alcohol, to their relationships with men and colleagues, to their love of books. They walked the woods of New England and rowed on the Charles River, and the miles they logged on land and water became a measure of the interior ground they covered. From disparate backgrounds but with striking emotional similarities, these two private, fiercely self-reliant women created an attachment more profound than either of them could ever have foreseen. 

The friendship helped them define the ordinary moments of life as the ones worth cherishing. Then, several years into this remarkable connection, Knapp was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

With her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this moving memoir about treasuring and losing a best friend. Let’s Take the Long Way Home is a celebration of life and of the transformations that come from intimate connection—and it affirms, once again, why Gail Caldwell is recognized as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.

About the Author

Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (August 9, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812979117
• ISBN-13: 978-0812979114

SOURCE:  PUBLISHER

MY THOUGHTS

ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT

This book combines all of my favorite elements:  dogs, friendship, memoirs and wonderful writing.  The story that Gail Caldwell brings to life is how a dog connected her to Caroline Knapp, her best friend and confident and she survived her own life and that of losing her best friend to cancer.  People rarely have a chance at such a deep friendship and when it does occur it is a miracle.  This should have been a sad tale of loss, but Caldwell finds some really happy things to reminisce and relate.  It will speak to anyone who has ever lost a loved one and had a dog right there to comfort them.  

I recently lost my mother to cancer and it happened much the same way that Caldwell had to deal with Knapp's death.  I really wish I had this book when I was going through my own grief a few years ago.  She so eloquently puts in words what I could not formulate in my own.  Caldwell relates that even though she and Knapp had very different childhoods, they both made the same decisions that led them to become recovering alcoholics and fast friends.  There is some sadness and loss in the story as the author relates her own recovery but overall, the story is a wonderful gift to readers.  I would love to read more about her adventures with her dogs. 

WANT TO WIN A COPY OF THIS BOOK? 

Contest is open to anyone over 13 years old with a US mailing address (sorry, no PO Boxes)

Contest ends on 9.5.11 Winner will be chosen by Random.org on 9.6.11

Winner will have 48 hours to respond to email or a new winner will be chosen.

This giveaway is sponsored by Random House and ONE copy is available.

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