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Health, Mind & Body |
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His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina
written by Danielle Steel
Studio : Wheeler Publishing
by Wheeler Publishing
Publisher : Wheeler Publishing
Released : 1999-07
Availability : This Item is currently Not Available
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9781568957104
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 206 reviews)
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Product Description |
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"This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death." From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him--and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans. Nick rocketed through life like a shooting star. Signs of his illness were subtle, often paradoxical. He spoke in full sentences at age one. He was a brilliant, charming child who never slept. And at first, even his mother explained away his quicksilver moods. Nick always marched to a different drummer. His gift for writing was extraordinary, his musical talent promised a golden future. But by the time he entered junior high, Danielle Steel saw her beloved son hurtling toward disaster and tried desperately to get Nick the help he needed--the opening salvos of what would become a ferocious pitched battle for his life. Even as he struggled, Nick's charisma and accomplishments remained undimmed. He bared his soul in his journal with uncanny insight, in searing prose, poetry, and song. When he was finally diagnosed and treated, it bought time, but too little. In the end, perhaps nothing could have saved him from the insidious disease that had shadowed him from his earliest years. At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel's tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all. |
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Americancivilwar.com Review |
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Like Kurt Cobain, Nick Traina lived for punk rock (his bands made two CDs, Gift Before I Go and 17 Reasons), succumbed to heroin addiction, and died of suicide. His mom, Danielle Steel, takes us through her 19 twister-like years with Nick in a memoir more affecting than her potboiler novels. Like his AWOL addict father, Nick had good looks, bad behavior, and a yen for the feminine. Five days before he died, he phoned a woman he saw in a centerfold and had a new girlfriend by nightfall. But his fun was ever haunted by manic depression. At age 11, he was a bed wetter who ate all the Tylenol and Sudafed in the house. He first considered suicide at 13, as Steel learned by reading his diaries after his death. There is tension in this story--one doctor told Steel if she could get Nick to live to 30, he'd probably live a normal life span. (For example, Nick's troubled dad resurfaced, sober, soon after his son's death.) And Steel conveys a sense of the intelligence Nick used to conceal his learning disability, and the irreverent charm that alternated with irrational rages. Oliver Sacks has urged us not to ask what neurological disease a person has, but what sort of person the disease has got hold of. Steel gives us a vivid sense of the costs of the disease to a family--and of the person who was Nick Traina. --Tim Appelo |
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Just as captivating 10 years later |
A simple review for a simply amazing book.
10 years ago it shook my emotional core, and it did the same again this read. |
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His Bright Light - A Child With Mental Illness |
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The notoriously private Danielle Steel opens up her entire life to readers in this emotional and moving true story about her son Nick, who struggled his entire life with mental illness. I highly recommend this book for any mother who has a child with a mental illness. |
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Beautifully Written From The Heart |
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This book went straight to the heart. For any of you faced with challenging children, this book shows a mothers journey of never giving up through life's challenges with raising a challenging child. |
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A searing and moving account |
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This is not just one mother's struggle to help and understand her bipolar child, it is a commentary on the state of help for mentally ill adolescents. The one mother, of course, being the famous and wealthy Danielle Steel who had resources beyond most parents wildest dreams. Yet she encountered numerous educators, psychologists and psychiatrists who were incompetent and disastrous. But this book is also about unconditional love, being resourceful and never giving up. As someone who has worked in both mental health and education, I am so sad that when kids don't fall into the cookie-cutter mold (although Nick was far from that), there is such a hodge-podge of often inadequate help for them. I highly recommend this book and think Danielle Steel has really given readers a wonderful gift in sharing her story. |
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she liked it! |
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bought this book for girlfrind, she has a sizeable collection of danielle steel, an her comment when finish reading it was "that lady speaks from the heart" .she being one who knows her danielle steel,an commenting on them to me, this was one of her better recommendations. Enjoy! |
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