This is my first review in quite some time. A while back, at the beginning of November, I suffered my own loss. My wife and I separated and she took the children and left. It was a devastating time for me. For at least a week I couldn't sleep or work. I talked about it at the Horror Drive-In Message Board.
I also mentioned at the message board that one of my favorite writers, David Lozell Martin, was having a new book out at the end of December. It is called Losing Everything and that's all I knew about it.
Enter Josh Martin, son of David Lozell Martin. He happened upon the forum and was happy to see some of us talking with admiration about his father. He also read the threads where I talked about losing my wife and family. He wrote me and told me that I simply needed to read Losing Everything. And he was kind enough to send me an Advance Reading Copy.
I've come to expect the unexpected from David Martin. In an uncommonly diverse career as a novelist, he has published heartbreakingly good mainstream dramas, hard-hitting crime fiction, allegory, epic adventure and, what I consider to be his masterpiece, a romantic novel called Crazy Love. This time, however, David Martin has written the most explosive story of his life and it's all true. Losing Everything is the true account of a man who had it all and through an outlandish series of miscalculations and bad decisions, lost everything. His wife, his home, his health, his finances, his career and ultimately, his sanity.
Martin was a man that lived life to its fullest. A literary artist, he has always written with heart and guts. He lived his own personal life as a man eager to devour the world and its temptations. It's a wild, profane, hysterical, harrowing, outrageous story, but it is also wise, profound and spiritual.
That the fans of David Lozell Martin need to read Losing Everything is a given, but I think the book will appeal to a much broader audience. Writers' memoirs tend to be boring to any but their most loyal fans, but everyone could benefit from this tale. Those, like I, that have suffered life-shattering losses will get a lot of wisdom from it. But the book might even be more valuable to those that haven't lost a thing. For no matter how strong, how smart, how secure, how protected, we might think we are, life has a terrible way of kicking our sorry asses down the steps when we least expect it. And then it tends to take a crap on us while we're down there writing in agony.
I don't think this is really a spoiler, but I'll give a minor warning. Losing Everything does not end on a tragic note. After all, the book got written and published, when there was a point when such a thing would have appeared to have been impossible. David Martin emerged from his traumas with his wit, his dignity and, best of all, his talent intact. Losing Everything is perhaps his finest book. True, it's hard to beat Crazy Love, but Losing Everything comes damned close.
As for me, there is a light at the end of my tunnel as well. I'm working toward a reconciliation with my wife Tanya. It will be hard. It's never easy to find one's way out of the dark woods back home, but those of us with courage and fortitude have a pretty good chance of doing so.
I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Josh Martin, not only for being a hero in Losing Everything, but for offering me some much-needed words at my own darkest hour. In the form of the wonderful book his father wrote.
Buy it from Amazon.com
I also mentioned at the message board that one of my favorite writers, David Lozell Martin, was having a new book out at the end of December. It is called Losing Everything and that's all I knew about it.
Enter Josh Martin, son of David Lozell Martin. He happened upon the forum and was happy to see some of us talking with admiration about his father. He also read the threads where I talked about losing my wife and family. He wrote me and told me that I simply needed to read Losing Everything. And he was kind enough to send me an Advance Reading Copy.
I've come to expect the unexpected from David Martin. In an uncommonly diverse career as a novelist, he has published heartbreakingly good mainstream dramas, hard-hitting crime fiction, allegory, epic adventure and, what I consider to be his masterpiece, a romantic novel called Crazy Love. This time, however, David Martin has written the most explosive story of his life and it's all true. Losing Everything is the true account of a man who had it all and through an outlandish series of miscalculations and bad decisions, lost everything. His wife, his home, his health, his finances, his career and ultimately, his sanity.
Martin was a man that lived life to its fullest. A literary artist, he has always written with heart and guts. He lived his own personal life as a man eager to devour the world and its temptations. It's a wild, profane, hysterical, harrowing, outrageous story, but it is also wise, profound and spiritual.
That the fans of David Lozell Martin need to read Losing Everything is a given, but I think the book will appeal to a much broader audience. Writers' memoirs tend to be boring to any but their most loyal fans, but everyone could benefit from this tale. Those, like I, that have suffered life-shattering losses will get a lot of wisdom from it. But the book might even be more valuable to those that haven't lost a thing. For no matter how strong, how smart, how secure, how protected, we might think we are, life has a terrible way of kicking our sorry asses down the steps when we least expect it. And then it tends to take a crap on us while we're down there writing in agony.
I don't think this is really a spoiler, but I'll give a minor warning. Losing Everything does not end on a tragic note. After all, the book got written and published, when there was a point when such a thing would have appeared to have been impossible. David Martin emerged from his traumas with his wit, his dignity and, best of all, his talent intact. Losing Everything is perhaps his finest book. True, it's hard to beat Crazy Love, but Losing Everything comes damned close.
As for me, there is a light at the end of my tunnel as well. I'm working toward a reconciliation with my wife Tanya. It will be hard. It's never easy to find one's way out of the dark woods back home, but those of us with courage and fortitude have a pretty good chance of doing so.
I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Josh Martin, not only for being a hero in Losing Everything, but for offering me some much-needed words at my own darkest hour. In the form of the wonderful book his father wrote.
Buy it from Amazon.com
The author does not allow comments to this entry
No comments