The power of love and kindness
Pat St. Germain explores books that hit home.
End of the Rope: Mountains, Marriage, and Motherhood Jan Redford Random House
Whether she’s clinging to a sheer rock face or hanging tough through a bad marriage, mountain climber Jan Redford is often in danger of losing her grip in this absorbing memoir spanning her first 30 years. Her life of derring-do begins at age 14, when she impresses her alcoholic father by scaling a dangerous cliff, setting a self-suppressing pattern of seeking approval from men who continually disappoint her. A decade later, she’s completed multiple climbs, made a series of bad romantic choices — and one good one, who is swept away in a fatal avalanche. When she embarks on her greatest and most challenging adventure — motherhood — Redford soon finds herself figuratively, and at times literally, at the end of her rope.
The Home for Unwanted Girls Joanna Goodman HarperCollins
A star-crossed teenage romance ends with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy in 1949 rural Quebec, setting the stage for a multi-generational tale of love, loss and redemption. Inspired by a horrific chapter in Canadian history, and her own mother’s experience as the child of an English father and French mother, Goodman seamlessly weaves fictional drama with historical fact — English-French prejudices and the brutal treatment of the Duplessis Orphans. (Under longtime Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, thousands of healthy children were declared mentally unfit in the 1950s, when Catholic Church-run orphanages were converted to psychiatric hospitals to be eligible for higher rates of federal funding.)
The Power of Kindness: Why Empathy Is Essential in Everyday Life Dr. Brian Goldman HarperCollins
Emergency-room doctor and host of CBC Radio’s White Coat, Black Art, Brian Goldman worries his capacity for empathy has been eroded by too many years in the ER. So he embarks on a globe-trotting journey of discovery, interviewing some of the kindest people in the world, along with experts who can shed light on what makes empathetic people tick. Goldman’s scattergun approach doesn’t always hit the mark. But along the way, he picks up some fascinating facts about criminal minds, Japanese robots and nursing home staff who practise a unique form of empathy.