The oft-quoted expression "difficulty generates meaning" is elevated to a higher level of significance on reading this memoir of the highs and lows Jack Hanna and his wife, Brighid, experienced with their physically handicapped and intellectually gifted son, Davoren. While Davoren Hanna's poems stand on their own merit as testimony to the potential for creative energy to shine through great physical disabilities, journalist and writer Jack Hanna is brutally honest yet strikingly eloquent in his diary-like account of life for this small, unusual family. With both his wife and son now dead, Jack Hanna has provided a wonderful and emotionally challenging read for anyone willing to enter a space where physical handicap and poetic expression become a centrifugal force in the lives of so many people.
Sylvia Thompson