Paper Cranes: A Mother’s Story of Courage and Determination (Cheryl Koenig, Exisle, $34.95 pb, ISBN 9781877437106, March) ****

This is the inspiring and uplifting story of the determination, dedication and sacrifice of a mother, and her unwavering quest to help her 12-year-old son, Jonathan, after he was hit by a car and left brain-damaged. Cheryl Koenig narrates her family’s ‘journey of sorrow, discovery and healing,’ and using her journal entries, we follow Jonathan’s courageous progress propelled by his parents’ relentless fight to prove doctors wrong and see their son mobile and talking again. The writing is clear and precise, the
story fast-paced and detailed. We share the parents’ loss—of their perfect son, of self, of their family structure and their business—the legal struggles to find justice for their son, and the evaporation of life as they had known it. This book is filled with messages of hope and love and will be read by people who enjoy real-life stories where there’s triumph over adversity and internal peace after trauma and chaos. Koenig is the author of There’s Always Hope… Just Alter the Dreams and The Courage to Care and a member of an advisory panel for the Brain Injury Association. This book is another in the Hourglass series of true stories by women.

Anastasia Gonis is a freelance writer and reviewer and former bookseller who writes and reviews regularly for Buzz Words

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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