Alive by Grace

I had already chosen my Book of the Year for 2018 but I've had to revise that after reading Alive by Grace. It is a short (about 100 pages) but intense testimony of twenty-two year old mother Suzanne Cavalier's fight to give her newborn and extremely ill son Christopher the chance of life. When born Christopher was so ill doctors took him away to intensive care before Suzanne could even hold him and he is given a two percent chance to live. What follows is a mother's harrowing yet compelling account of countless hospital trips across America during her son's first year of life, trying to get to grips with the medical world and experimental treatment which they hope will give her son the best chance of life. This book is an intense insight into her own inner world and a mother's refusal to give up. There is no padding whatsoever in this story and while at times I actually wanted some just to be able to catch my breath I realised the story was so compelling precisely because it was so relentlessly intense. The second half of the book is told by Christopher himself and his account of his own recollections and the difficulties he faced growing up. Running through the book is a mother's faith in God and a son's love for this same Jesus, desiring his friends to know him as well. I can't imagine the trauma actually living this story involved. We also follow the difficulties of husband 'Big Chris' and his attempts to keep his job going while having to travel large distances between work and hospitals and the strain this puts on the marriage. We are introduced to frankly heroic medical staff and also the difficulties Suzanne faces when other staff are unaware of how to deal with Christopher's condition, a mother's instinct when something is wrong and her battles to convince medical staff of how they should treat her son. As stated above it's a short book but it races along at breakneck speed and by the time I finished it I was, with Suzanne and Christopher, deeply grateful to God, to medical science and to the medical staff who worked tirelessly to give Christopher the best chance at life. The book includes pictures of Christopher, his family and medical staff. Alive by Grace is now my joint Book of the Year for 2018! Highly recommended!

Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for a review copy. I will post to Amazon and Goodreads.

The Boy Who Lived! Alive by Grace is the inspirational story of a mother and her son who was born with a catastrophic birth defect. Miraculously, Christopher survived! This story is told from the point of view of Christopher's mom using a journal that she kept during Christopher's illness and through Christopher's own voice. This book story of hope and faith will help and inspire parents of children born with health issues, and young people who were born with birth defects and overcome the odds. Christopher talks about issues with bullying in school, and his experiences with friends who have experienced depression. Throughout the book, the deep faith of both mother and son is evident.

I read a lot of fiction and am often amazed, though I shouldn't be by now, at how true narratives are many times much more astounding and mind boggling than made up stories. I was drawn to "Alive by Grace" immediately by the cover and title because it drew me back to images of my own daughter and the struggle for life at her beginning. Like Christopher, our baby Monica had several churches praying for her and it took 6 weeks of intensive/critical neonatal care before we ever knew if she would survive of not. Because her lungs, being premature, were also insufficiently developed. Finally, having survived all of that she developed viral encephalitis for which there was no treatment. But it was through this experience that I accepted Christ into my life and everything turned around with no side effects or permanent damage at all to our beautiful daughter. She eventually excelled in college and now has 4 beautiful, very smart children of her own. But I relived my own experience as Christopher's mother Suzanne related her terrifying, yet grace-infused story. There can be no greater agony to a mother, especially one so young as Suzanne, than enduring days, weeks, and months on end, holding on to every ounce of faith, hope and courage that you have for your child to survive. But Suzanne endured even much more than I for a much longer more peril-fraught time and emerged victorious in countless ways. Her story is high in emotion and worth very high recommendation. And filled with inspiration for everyone!

At first I couldn't get into read this book but I was pleasantly surprised. It's an great book that I would highly recommend.