Lori L. LakeReviews
Fated Love by Radclyffe
Minus One: A Twelve Step Journey by Bridget Bufford
 Fated Loveby Radclyffe Bookends Press, 2004 http://www.bookendspress.com 2004/$18.99/312 pgs/ISBN: 1932667148 New employee Quinn Maguire shows up at Philadelphia Medical College’s ER/Trauma Unit on a quiet Monday morning, but before she’s even had a chance to be introduced to the lone woman sitting behind the intake counter, a gunshot victim is wheeled in. Quinn looks around, can’t find an attending physician, and immediately takes over the victim’s care with the help of a nurse and the woman who first greeted her whom she assumes is a resident. Big mistake. Instead, it’s Honor Blake, the chief of emergency services. Fortunately, Honor doesn’t hold Quinn’s assumptions against her. While both women are secretly impressed with the skills the other displayed in saving the patient’s life, they’re also wary of the other. So begins an uneasy alliance during which circumstances draw Honor and Quinn together, and they find themselves unaccountably attracted to one another. Honor can’t figure out why a surgeon as skilled as Quinn chose to leave a prominent position at a big-time New York hospital to be an attending ER doctor at a university hospital in Philly. And Quinn can’t figure out why Honor shies away from her when it’s clear there’s an undeniable pull between them. Both of them have secrets they refuse to divulge. How can they work together, much less become friends—or more—so long as each is so carefully guarding her own little world? The story of these two women’s lives—and the twists and turns that take place to bring them to the same place—is impossible to put down. With ample angst, realistic and exciting medical emergencies, winsome secondary characters, and a sprinkling of humor, FATED LOVE turns out to be a terrific romance. It’s one of the best I have read in the last three years. Run—do not walk—right out and get this one. You’ll be hooked by yet another of Radclyffe’s wonderful stories. Highly recommended.
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 Minus One: A Twelve Step Journeyby Bridget Bufford Alice Street Editions/ Haworth Press www.haworthpress.com, 2004 238 pgs/$17.95 ISBN: 1560234687 Stubborn, angry, and fresh out of treatment, Terry Manescu moves in with her friend Angela who takes her in provided Terry stay sober and contribute to the household. Although Terry doesn’t realize the depths of her pain at first, she is still in a world of hurt and facing a lot more problems than she can imagine fixing. She’s got intelligence and guts going for her, but she’s also got an attitude which has not entirely changed even with treatment and AA attendance. “Everyone with more sobriety than me thinks that they know what’s best for me. AA is a conspiracy to rob me of my individuality and my intellect” (p. 14). She says this halfway tongue in cheek, but at the same time, Terry knows that she must change. She just isn’t entirely sure how to go about it. Though only 26, Terry has already been through a lot in her life. She’s got issues with her family, some of which are because she’s lesbian, but also because she was such a wild girl, and her connections with her brothers and parents have been affected by all the lies and failures. She flunked out of school, ran with a fast crowd, did a lot of risky things. At some level, she knows all of this—and the addiction to drugs and alcohol—is terrible for her health, balance, and well-being, but she kids herself whenever her shortcomings become apparent to others or to her. “These insinuations about my ego just chap my ass,” (p. 31) she says early on. This first-person narrator has got a comic voice at times, and the story she tells is, by turns, very funny and very heartbreaking. It takes a long time and quite a number of mistakes before Terry starts to get her head on straight. For anyone who has ever been addicted, particularly to alcohol, or been around others struggling with the nightmare of drunkenness, every angle of her story rings true. When Terry finally admits that she “cannot take the pain of knowing that I can’t trust myself, of knowing the rage and insanity that lurk within me, waiting for the next drink,” (p. 122), a glimmer of hope can be found. She still has to hit bottom, learn to reach out, re-learn how to live, but with that admission, she is starting to change. Bufford opens each chapter with a quotation from 12-Step literature or meetings, and that’s where the title of the book came from: “If there’s a minus (step) one, that’s where I’m at.” But don’t mistake this book to be only about recovery. It’s a coming-of-age story, a love story, and an entertaining and engrossing journey through one woman’s life. I couldn’t put the book down and read it in one sitting. I highly recommend it. |