Though slightly put off by the hype of Elizabeth Edward’s television book tour a few months ago, I nevertheless ordered Resilience,  her book with the dreadful self-help subtitle of: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities. I teach a course called “Writing the Healing Story” and also do workshops at the Wellness Community and I thought I might use some quotes at least from the book. So it was with great surprise and pleasure to discover what a well written memoir this is. Elizabeth Edwards is not only an amazingly brave and wonderful woman, she’s also a terrific writer. For those of you who have lived on a desert island without modern communication for the past few years and don’t know her story:  Elizabeth Edwards has faced more of life’s adversities than any human being should ever have to experience – the loss of a son, her own diagnosis of terminal cancer, and a husband who was unfaithful to her at the worst time, with the worst woman, in the worst and most public way.

In Resilience she takes the high road. Not in a sticky, sweet way, no talk of “closure” (that awful word)  – she’s mad as hell and let’s the reader know it.  But she keeps plowing onward – doesn’t deign to mention the woman’s name who said to her husband “You are so hot.”  She quotes poets and she thinks and feels deeply without jargon, without easy answers.  Though publicists pushed the infidelity in the book to sell it, it is more about her son Wade and the unspeakable pain of losing a child. The book keeps looping back to him and that loss, and to her childhood memories, and the discovery she made reading her mother’s diary about her father’s possible infidelity. All of this written with honesty and grace.

Check out the September issue of The Atlantic for the book review by Christopher Hitchens: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/elizabeth-edwards/2