Carolyn Walker, Every Least Sparrow (Garn Press, LLC,
New York, 2019). Preface by Raoul Hennekam, Professor of Pediatrics and
Translational Genetics.
Available in hard cover,
paperback and for Kindle.
Non-fiction
Reviewed
by Dorinda Kauzlarich-Rupe
“Many
long minutes passed. They hung in the air between us like icicles. I finally
broke the silence with a tirade of her symptoms, gleaned from the haze of
post-delivery, but they made no more sense to him than they did to me. I
watched while Don winced against the palate and spatula thumbs and beak nose. Then
I bespoke the trickle down fear that had welled up inside me during the night. ‘Do
you think you’ll be able to love her?’” (p. 14)
Author
Carolyn Walker has been involved in many different writing venues, including as
instructor, poet, memoirist, essayist, and reporter for newspapers and
magazines. She has a great talent for painting pictures with words—whether a
picture of a lovely scene or a heartbreak one. She brings you into the emotion
of the moment and has, therefore, won numerous writing awards. She has an
amazing command of the English language. I don't think I have ever read anything
that uses language as well as Walker uses it in this book.
This
book tells the story of bringing her daughter, Jennifer, into the world and
learning to live with her and support her. Jennifer is diagnosed, after hours of
research by the delivering physician, Dr. O’Neill, with the rare syndrome,
Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome, which manifests itself with “beak noses, sloping
eyes, jointless thumbs, and stymied IQs” (p 179).
It is a
fascinating story as she shares of all the emotions of parenting a child with a
disability—especially an unusual one--sharing the heartbreaks, celebrations,
challenges, pain, and rewards, beginning with the birth and proceeding through
all the life stages and experiences to the time when Jennifer leaves her
parental home to live her own life in her own special home, supervised by a
non-family woman.
This is
a beautifully written book, easy to read and highly recommended. The reader
becomes absorbed in the lives of Carolyn and of Jennifer—at least I did!
