I refer to this book all the time when I teach memoir because people often think that memoir is all about dysfunctional families. Pataki's story is an incredible exception to that "rule." I don't want to give anything away except to say, you want to see how this family copes with tragedy when it hits.

A beautiful and heartbreaking memoir, by a historical novelist who changes direction to share about her own life. A young wife never expects to have to care for a husband who's had a stroke, but this was Allison Pataki's sudden experience. Honest and raw, this book takes us through the process of the family finding a way to live together, through thick and thin.

I was honored to speak with Allison about this book on the Secret Library. Highly recommended to anyone who loves memoir. While a challenging topic, this book seeks hope in its tone, and succeeds in finding it.

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so heartbreaking but also inspirational. I liked how the author wrote about the present and what was happening but also would go back to the past too so you felt like you got to know her husband..

I always try to find positive sides of things, finding things to be grateful for and such. This book really breathes into the ideal and helps you see how to really turn things into possibility.

Allison is such a brave person with everything she went through so early into her marriage. Seeing the struggles of their marriage shows that real love can push through anything if you try hard enough. Life isn't easy but they were able to overcome so much and give hope to others.

Overall I enjoyed this book. It was well-written and I can't imagine going through the ordeal this couple endured. I always find books like this a little tedious in the middle, but that middle ground between the tragedy and miracle ARE tedious. I hope if I ever found myself in a similar situation my faith would be as unshakeable as theirs.

Beautiful, inspiring, and heartfelt! This memoir has all the feels you could need within its pages. I was glued to my kindle and swiped my screen as fast as I could. I am usually not a big fan of memoirs but this was phenomenal!

What a lovely and encouraging read. It was beautifully written. The content really made me rethink things and I love a book that challenges me in this way. So great!

Allison did a great job of mixing grief and hardship with the right mix of humor. The story she weaves of the love shared and obstacles encountered between she and her husband was uplifting. I enjoyed the way she interacted with the medical staff - working together to do what is needed.
This is not a book I would typically read but I enjoyed it.

This is one of the most touching and thought provoking books I have read in ears. Just beautiful and so inspirational.

Beauty in the Broken Places
by Allison Pataki

I didn’t really know anything about Allison Pataki when I picked up this book, aside from recognizing the name of her famous father. I hadn’t read any of her books. But I love reading an engaging memoir, and Allison’s story was unusual. (Go ahead, take a minute and read the blurb here. It’s a little long, but I’ll wait. If you’re like me, you’ve already purchased it by now. Should I keep waiting?) This story packs a punch. From crushing heartbreak to boundless joy, Pataki rides a roller coaster of emotions, reporting changes with a sense of wonder and wistfulness. Sometimes the veneer of her upbeat cheerleading cracks just a little, and Pataki seems to shy away from telling us just exactly how things are. As heartbreaking as it is, Pataki’s story is also of her family’s great love, and the many things, large and small, that they will do each day to insure that love will last.


For Goodreads:

Why I picked it — Because Pataki’s story was compelling, even in the blurb.
Reminded me of… another book on my to-read list, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, by Elizabeth McCracken.
For my full review — click here

What a beautiful memoir. Makes any reader realize everyone has problems, oftentimes those much greater than your own. Inspiring.

This is an amazing Memoir that touched the deep places in my soul, resonating with all the emotions that raw gripping fear brings and the unconditional love and the faith it needs to endure. Allison Pataki suddenly saw her husband Dave slip into unconsciousness from a stroke while they were on a flight bound for their 'Babymoon' in Hawaii. At once fear and disbelief, changed her life in a second, whirling her headlong into a place she never wanted to experience. Through many hours, days of painful therapy, and slow recovery, Allison five months pregnant stayed by her husbands side, helping him with his therapy and writing letters to him ones - she didn't know if he would ever be able to read. I can't say enough... I felt so full of hope after reading this beautifully written Memoir, and I know how hard recovery from a traumatic brain injury is. I just absolutely loved every page, never doubt the faith and resilience that can bring one through such an unexpected tragic event.

Beauty in the Broken Places: A Memoir of Love, Faith, and Resilience is a true love story. It is not a sugar-coated fairytale where everything works according to plan, but rather it is a real-life, rubber-meets-the-road testament to how love, devotion, and steadfast faith in God can empower you to weather a storm.
Five months pregnant, Allison Pataki and her husband, Dr. David Levy, were on their way to what they thought would be a relaxing trip to Hawaii – a much-anticipated “babymoon” before the birth of their precious child. Little did they know that this was the start of a different kind of journey, as Dave would suffer a massive stroke on the way to their destination.
This emotional, soul-stirring memoir is shaped from the daily letters Allison wrote to her husband as he set forth on the road to recovery. In truth, this was a journey toward recovery they both had to take. Allison’s faith deepened and matured, as she moved from grieving the man she had once known as her helpmate, hoping the “old Dave” would return, to a more profound love for the beloved man she had married -- for better or worse.
This beautiful story touched my heart deeply. It was nearly impossible to put down the book once I had started reading it. I highly recommend this heart-warming account of the power of faith, love, and determination.
I received an advance copy from the publisher to review. However, the opinions I’ve expressed are entirely my own.

This memoir deals with both the love and the resilience to go through the unthinkable. The author and her husband were on a flight and on their way to a baby-moon in Hawaii, when all of a sudden her husband suffered a life threatening and rare stroke, that had the plane making an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota, Dave was rushed to an emergency room for treatment, unconscious. When finally waking he had issues with his memory. Here the couples life changes for ever, as they fight to try and get Dave back to normal or at least the best he could become, everything was uncertain.
Dave himself a surgical resident in Chicago, was flown back there to be overseen by the hospital he knew.
Allison, his wife had a hard road ahead of her as well as she dealt with the uncertainties, of what their lives would be like. She had just lost the Dave she new and had to learn to accept and work with what he was like at this time. Pregnant with their first child, a move from one apartment to another, taking care of their dog and being there in the hospital day after day, going through therapy with him, became overwhelming at times and she just had to concentrate on the future and what it might hold. Luckily they both had the support of good friends and family that were their for them when needed, and kept them sane.
This story was really well written and it was interesting to see the results of the ongoing care and therapies that Dave was going through, and how everyone for that matter was able to deal with the circumstances of what had happened.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Random House
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When Allison was five months pregnant, her 30 year old husband had a stroke on a flight to their babymoon. Allison starts writing letters to her husband everyday to show her husband if he survived. I love that Allison turned to loved ones and prayed endlessly! She had hope and faith!
This book is such an inspirational memoir! I would highly recommend this book!

Typically, medical memoirs freak me out, and this one was no exception. Pataki's husband suffers a severe stroke at the age of 30 while they're flying to their "babymoon" vacation. Yep, she's five months pregnant when this occurs. Although the story is truly frightening, it was also inspirational. Both Pataki and her husband used their love for each other to bring them hope during this time. My only negative critique is that I found myself trying to rush through the sections about the beginning of their relationship that are sprinkled throughout the book. I just wanted to get back to the descriptions of how the husband was doing and what challenges they were facing at each step of his recovery. Definitely not a read for hypochondriacs or people with any health phobias!

A wonderful memoir of strength and courage in the face of a major health crisis. Beauty in the Broken Places is beautifully written!

Rating: 2.5

On June 9, 2015, historical novelist Allison Pataki—who was then five months pregnant—and her husband, Dr. David Levy, were en route to Hawaii. Dave was about to enter the fourth year of his orthopaedic surgery residency at Chicago’s Rush University, and he and his wife were taking a much-needed break to recharge. He had been driving himself hard for years—since first entering medical school, in fact—and typically put in 20-hour days. Recently, most of those days had been spent seated at a desk engaged in an intensive independent study/research project. The sedentary nature of that work may have had some impact on his circulatory system and what was to occur on the plane that evening.

Sometime around sunset, as the aircraft flew over the American midwest, Dave nudged his dozing wife awake, reporting that he couldn’t see out of his right eye. The pupil was significantly dilated and unresponsive to light. Airline staff were alerted, and medical personnel who happened to be aboard the plane attended Dave who quickly fell unconscious. A half hour was spent attempting to revive him before the plane made an emergency landing in Fargo, North Dakota. Transferred by ambulance to a nearby hospital, Dave was found to have suffered a devastating ischemic stroke, not the hemorrhagic kind that typically affects younger people, from which they can recover—though it’s an arduous process. A couple of anatomical variants in Dave’s heart and brain, in combination with his recent inactivity, meant that a blood clot in his leg which would normally have ended up in the lungs (which can be life-threatening in itself)) instead made its catastrophic way to his brain. It occluded the major blood vessel to the thalamus, the brain’s critical central sensory switchboard, which determines where incoming signals need to be routed. Not having received vital oxygen, the tissue there was now dead.

Within 24 hours Dave did wake up in the Fargo hospital. He did not suffer the motor deficits or paralysis so commonly seen with stroke patients, but he was seriously cognitively impaired—suffering amnesia and losing executive function (the ability to plan and initiate actions). He was also extremely sleepy, and, because of cranial nerve damage, unable to move his eyes. Because this kind of insult to the thalamus is so rarely seen in cases of stroke (a 2016 paper in the <i>Annals of Neuroscience</i> suggests such damage occurs in only .6 % of ischemic strokes), there was limited medical literature on the subject—as Dave’s father, a neurologist, and his brother, Andy, a cardiologist, quickly learned. No one knew how Dave would fare long term. The fact that he had survived such a catastrophic cerebral vascular accident at all was attributed to his youth, fitness, and good diet.

In recent years there has been a fair bit of talk about the plasticity of the brain, the ability of some areas to compensate for parts that have been irrevocably damaged. Pataki points out, however, that plasticity becomes more limited as a person ages. Dave was only 30 when his stroke occurred, still young enough for there to be hope that his brain might compensate for and adapt to the injury. Furthermore, in his pre-stroke life, he had been “very high-functioning with an above-average number of neurons firing to do his work as an orthopaedic surgeon,” “fit and strong” and “highly engaged in a rich and complex life, full of family and friends and activity.” Had his traumatic brain injury occurred a year or so later, his deficits would have been greater. If the stroke had occurred when Dave was 35, it is unlikely he would have survived at all.

The chapters in Pataki’s book alternate between the past (the story of the couple’s relationship, which began when both were students at Yale) and the time of the stroke and its aftermath. The memoir also includes some lovely photographs as well as snippets of the laptop letters Pataki began composing to Dave from the beginning of his ordeal. These letters provided a way for the author to converse with the husband that used to be and also served as records of the passing days. For the most part, the excerpts included in the book are judiciously short (until the conclusion, where an arguably unnecessary final letter in its entirety is attached).

Many of the details in the book underscore the fact that the author is a child of privilege. The daughter of a former governor of New York State, Pataki appears to have had every advantage in life. Unfulfilling and stressful work as a news writer in her twenties, for example, could be left behind for six months in Paris. Her aunt’s apartment in the French capital was conveniently vacant at the very point Pataki needed time to take stock of her life. When she returned to the U.S. and was no longer part of the TV news business, she got a job in her prominent father’s clean-energy company. She also appears to have had a large network of well-to-do, high-rolling friends who were able to fly to assist her in her time of need. As much as privilege helps a person negotiate life’s vicissitudes, however, it doesn’t ensure immunity to them. What I am saying here is that in spite of her immense privilege, Pataki’s distress can still be understood and related to. The thoughts and feelings she describes as she attempts to come to grips with her husband’s traumatic brain injury would likely be experienced by most of us were we to find ourselves in a similar situation.

Pataki’s writing is not stellar; occasionally, it’s overwrought. Generally, though, it is serviceable, accessible, and obviously geared towards a younger, mainstream female audience. Pataki is aware enough to know she had lived a charmed life until the fateful June 9th, 2015 flight. She writes about an essentially sunny 11-year relationship with Dave; his marriage proposal—on bended knee, of course; the custom-designed ring he proffered; the four-leaf clovers the two found at the time of their engagement, and their large and elaborate wedding. Some women might enjoy reading about this kind of thing, but I’m not one of them. Additionally, terms like the repeatedly used “babymoon” (Pataki’s word for a romantic holiday taken when pregnant) appear in the book. Again: a word such as this might not bother some, but I felt annoyed every time I encountered it. I understand the author’s desire to mark the contrast between the apparently charmed “before” and the very difficult “after”, but the descriptions of the couple’s first decade unfortunately read like stereotypical scenes from chick lit.

For me, the sections that relate to the stroke made for better reading. Emotions here are more complex, conflicted, and credibly articulated. Pataki is also able to movingly describe the many kindnesses that were extended to her and her husband in the course of their ordeal—sometimes by complete strangers. For instance, after the ambulance had delivered her husband to the Fargo hospital, an EMT lingered and passed her a wad of twenty-dollar bills, telling her simply: “We collect a fund for the family members . . . for moments like this.”

Pataki describes the life she lived, including the progression of her pregnancy, as Dave recovered from his stroke—moving from the hospital in Fargo to Rush University Medical Center, and finally to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, the top facility of its kind in the U. S.. Towards the end of Dave’s time in the rehab hospital, he and his family were told that he was expected to make a full recovery. For his wife, though, the greatest challenges were yet to come: when Dave was released from hospital. After spending several months living with and receiving the support of Dave’s parents, the couple went home to their new apartment. Not only did Pataki now have a newborn daughter, but she also had a “new, morphed, entirely unrecognizable version of the man . . . [she] had known and loved.” Having lost higher brain function, Dave no longer. had “the ability to be the self-starting manager of his own life”. Pataki was tasked with the dual roles of being wife and caregiver, and she tells of the serious toll this took on her.

<i><b>Beauty in the Broken Places</i></b> is certainly not the best memoir I’ve ever read. However, it is still a powerful testament to love and, at times, an affecting record of endurance and adaptation to adversity. The reader cares about David Levy, roots for him, and appreciates the hardships his family members have faced, including the psychological adjustments that they, too, had to make.

Humans have a fundamental need to turn experiences—particularly chaotic, terrifying, foundation-shaking ones—into stories. Pataki’s narrative of her husband’s life-changing stroke is apparently modelled after Hemingway’s famous, often cited observation: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places” which serves as the memoir’s epigraph. That quotation sounds profound and true, but I’m not sure that I believe it, nor am I persuaded that Pataki does. For one thing, the author’s propensity for panic has only increased since June, 2015. “I saw threats everywhere,” she writes of the time after the crisis. To illustrate: one evening as she and her husband set out on a walk (after Dave had been released from hospital), she became frenzied when he reported dizziness and faintness, thinking they must mean another stroke. They were, in fact, only physiological responses to the brightness and heat of a summer evening. Pataki’s later assessment of her situation as an unwanted lesson in endurance rings truer by far than any Hemingway quotation: “This stroke was foisted on my family. It’s not like we chose it and then decided whether or not we could deal with it. We have to deal with it because it’s our reality. And, if it was your reality, you would have to deal with it, too.”

Allison Pataki is a person of some religious faith and there are occasional references to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, angels, miracles, and divine plans. Clearly, her religious beliefs assisted her, but I find that when I encounter the language of traditional Christianity—this particular brand of “faith”—I feel a mixture of amazement, incredulity, and mild distaste. I realize this is unfair of me. Obviously there are all kinds of ways to be in this world and if a traditional Christian belief system supports someone in coping with great hardship and pain, who am I to judge?

In the end, I have mixed feelings about this book. I was interested (and even invested) in Dave’s story, but the writing itself isn’t memorable, and I didn't care for the domestic detail and the back story of the couple’s courtship. I think an editor should have advised the removal of significant chunks of that content. I believe it would have improved the book in the process.

Thank you NetGalley and publishers for a digital copy of this book to review. This is a powerful memoir about a young doctor who has a traumatic stroke while heading to vacation with his wife who is five months pregnant. It details his remarkable (and arduous) recovery, narrated by his wife who finds herself living a life she could not fathom. This hits all the right notes on grief, grit, and the power of others to help see you through a nightmare. Highly recommended.