On My Own

December 14, 2015
Rehm (Finding My Voice), a popular National Public Radio host and author, has dedicated this heartfelt memoir to her husband, the late John Rehm, and the book speaks powerfully to those who have lost a loved one and found the strength to carry on. Rehm describes her 54-year marriage to John, a successful attorney, in honest terms. She was clearly in love with him and in awe of him, but she also admits that the marriage was not perfect. At times, her husband withdrew into silence, and the couple considered divorce. On the whole, as Rehm describes, the union was one in which love and mutual encouragement played significant parts. She writes that after her spouse was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and began to slowly decline in health, they grew even closer; she crawled into his hospital bed to tenderly read him poetry. Eventually John was severely disabled, angered and disheartened by a system that disallowed physician-assisted death in such cases, and he made the decision to end his life by refusing sustenance. Rehm is now closing in on 80, and nearing her retirement from radio. The seasoned broadcaster explores the many changes and challenges that come when a spouse dies; she shares feelings of guilt, loneliness, fear, and worry as well as acknowledging her strengths and newfound independence. Rehm’s forthright memoir, which probes the process of loss, grief, and renewal, will find a wide audience with fans of her show as well as many others facing this profound passage.

December 15, 2015
NPR host Rehm (Life with Maxie, 2010, etc.) reflects on loneliness, loss, and aging. "For fifty-four years I have been a wife," Rehm writes in a memoir more notable for candor than artfulness. "Now I am widow. Am I someone new?" In the mid-2000s, her husband, John, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, marking a profound change in their lives. As he gradually succumbed to the illness, the author found herself increasingly alone: the couple slept in separate bedrooms because of John's involuntary thrashing, and in 2012, he moved into an assisted living facility because he needed 24-hour care. Despondent over his condition, he begged for help to end his life. "We had promised that we would do everything we could to support each other's wishes in the face of debilitating and unalterable conditions," Rehm writes. But she was helpless, as were John's physicians. Making his own decision, John refused food, water, or medicines, and after 10 days, "surely the longest of my life," the author admits, he died. Rehm was beset by guilt, worrying that she should have given up her career to care for John during the final year of his life. As she looks back at their sometimes-rocky marriage, she blames herself for not being passive or submissive enough to please a man who wanted to dominate. The author is often overcome by grief, not only for John, but "for our youth, for our love, for our happiness." Widowhood is not the only identity change that Rehm has faced. She wonders who she will be once she retires and how, beginning her eighth decade, she can continue as "a fully engaged human being." The prose reads like journal entries or letters to readers, punctuated by sometimes-trite remarks: "Death is the ultimate finality," she writes. "There is no turning back." Nevertheless, her perspectives on old age are brave and uplifting.

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January 1, 2016

Veteran public radio personality and interviewer Rehm (Finding My Voice) presents the next installment in her story in this candid account of the last years of marriage to her husband of over 50 years, John. Rehm writes of John's life, his struggle with declining abilities owing to Parkinson's disease, and her reactions to those life-altering circumstances. Her distinctive radio persona may be detected in each episode she recounts, including those dealing with her own ambivalence about John's move to a care facility and her desire to keep working throughout the years of his decline. More pointedly, however, Rehm takes aim at the unsettled state of U.S. right-to-die legislation and policies, a situation that forced a heartbreaking and brutal decision by John. Anecdotes about other popular news figures who have been widowed, and Rehm's ruminations on her retirement plans as well as her own mortality are presented in the same conversational tone familiar to listeners of her long-running show. VERDICT Rehm doesn't gloss over the emotional complexities and difficulties of a long-term marriage, nor does she shy away from making her opinions about the inconsistencies in right-to-die legislation known (despite the apparent objections of her employers). Her views on the controversial topic, delivered with her hard-earned observations about its ramifications, distinguish this account from other memoirs of widowhood.--Therese Purcell Nielsen, Huntington P.L., NY

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2016
In this thought-provoking memoir, veteran NPR-host Rehm is likable and relatable as she writes about the death of her husbandtheir difficult marriage lasted 54 years. Rehm didn't go to college because her Middle Eastern immigrant parents didn't think women needed to, while her Harvard-educated husband, a lawyer for the U.S. State Department, supported her efforts as a volunteer and then as a staff member at a Washington, D.C., radio station. In 2005, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder of the nervous system. Once he could no longer stand, walk, eat, or bathe himself, he decided to end his life. On June 14, 2014, he began turning away medicine and food. Nine days later, at age 84, he died, 35 years after The Diane Rehm Show debuted. Rehm feels guilt with a capital G about moving her husband to an assisted-living facility. ( Why couldn't I have given up my job to care for him? ) Rehm fans and families dealing with no-hope-for-improvement diseases and end-of-life decisions will very much appreciate this forthright account.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2015

Jansma triumphed in 2013 with his smart and sinuous debut, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, which proved its worth by winning the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and being named an ALA Notable Book and a Discover Great New Writers pick. His new work features five friends whose postcollege life is disrupted by a cancer diagnosis.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.