A Short Life Well Lived

SUMMARY:  "A tumor?" I repeated, my voice shaking.
     With those two words, doting father Brian O'Connor is plunged into the deepest nightmare he can imagine.  All his baseball-loving son, Tommy, did was break his arm when pitching ... and then doctors found a malignant growth in the eleven-year-old.  Now father and son must tread an uncharted road full of frustration and fear.
     Brian has never faced a foe he couldn't overcome or outmaneuver.  Blind since birth, he's blown down every obstacle in his path.  Now a happily married father of two, and a successful prosecutor in the district attorney's office, he must confront the possibility of death - an enemy maddeningly tricky to fight.
     As the battle to save Tommy's life stretches his family's stamina to the limits, it will take all of Brian's resources - including a patient minister who challenges his faithlessness - to help Tommy endure treatment and a frightening prognosis.
     In this powerfully moving novel, bestselling author Tom Sullivan, a blind father himself, sensitively takes readers on a journey of discovery.  There is pain, yes, but also hope: understanding the ways God sometimes intervenes in life's crises and learning how to keep faith when He doesn't.  You will leave the story enlightened, moved, and grateful - and perhaps with a strengthened faith of your own.

REVIEW:  This was a very interesting book.  The story was intriguing and held my attention from the beginning.  Having had friends that experienced the diagnosis of cancer (as patients and parents), my heart went out to both Tommy, Brian and their family.  I like the way the author shows how Brian, as a blind man and a parent, experiences the world, the arena of doctors and hospitals, and the feeling of helpless that comes when your child is sick.
      There was only one area I thought could have been different and that was Brian's views on Tommy's spirit.  Brian struggles with Tommy's diagnosis and how God is involved in it all.  At the end of the book, with Clayton McRae's help (the palliative care team pastor assigned to help the O'Connor family), Brian mentions having "embraced the one true and everlasting God" but says he lives knowing Tommy's spirit renews his faith and gives him hope of the future.  I believe it is the Holy Spirit helps us renew our faith and gives us hope, not people we love that may have passed on.  Other than that, this is a great book.  Check it out.

This book was provided by Glass Road Publicity Group for review without compensation.

For Tom Sullivan, an Emmy-nominated actor, singer, author, and producer, the "inconvenience" of being blind has never kept him from competing in a world where he realized that to be equal, for him, meant that he must be better.  His autobiography, If You Could See What I Hear, was adapted into a major motion picture.  Tom is now writing and producing for television and film.