Author Helen’s booked
Helen Brown lost her nine-yearold son, battled breast cancer and, more recently, found herself lost in her life.
But the former Taranaki woman got through hard times with the help of cats and is now a New York Times best-selling author with 10 books to her credit. She has just published her third memoir, Bono, about the dying cat that got her through her ‘‘two-third life crisis’’, and is back in her home town for a book launch tonight.
‘‘I’d had 22 years of marriage, kids had left home, I was getting over breast cancer and I felt at a loss really,’’ says Brown.
She says that under her publisher’s guidance she packed up her things and moved to New York for a time. But there was a catch – when she got to the Big Apple she had to foster a dying cat, Bono. ‘‘I learnt a lot from him because, like me, he was in a twothird life crisis.
‘‘He approached every day with curiosity, he had no fear and wouldn’t worry about the future.
Brown says she was never a cat person. That was until she ended up with Cleo – the cat that inspired, and gave its name to, the first of Brown’s memoirs based around felines.
‘‘It was a revelation to me actually, to see how a fluffy little kitten could help heal.
‘‘Cleo was about recovering from grief – I lost my son Sam in 1983. He was nine and run over,’’ says Brown, who has three surviving children and two granddaughters.
Her second book, After Cleo, Came Jonah, was about the cat she had during her battle with breast cancer.
Brown got into writing as a journalist, following in the footsteps of her mother, who worked for the Ha¯ wera Star during the war. Today the Melbourne-based author is touring New Zealand for the release of Bono. As for her twothird life crisis phase? ‘‘I’ve never felt better, I love it, this is the best phase of life – it’s liberating.’’