Review: The Long Awakening by Lindsey O'Connor

The day Lindsey O’Connor’s fifth baby entered the world, was the day she left. For 47 days she lay suspended in a medically-induced coma, hovering in nothingness. The time before and after her long sleep were spliced together in O’Connor’s memory. The time in the middle, too long for her loved ones, and time erased for her. The miracle her family desperately prayed for was a miracle that Lindsey missed. She awoke to a world that kept moving without her and began the long journey to love her newborn daughter, to search for her identity, meaning and lost and found love. Applying her journalism background, O’Connor set out to discover what happened during her time lost as she does when researching a piece of literary journalism about someone else. In a strange twist, she reported her own story.

 

In The Long Awakening, O’Connor beautifully and bravely shares her journey to re-stitch her life after a life-altering trauma and her continuing search for self. On August 30, 2002 at the age of 41, O’Connor experienced childbirth complications and received over 20 units of blood, two times the amount of blood in her body, while giving birth to her daughter, Caroline. Doctors put her into a medically-induced coma to allow her brain, lungs and body to heal. Initially her doctors did not know what was medically wrong, and there was no promise she would wake up. While in a coma, Lindsey suffered multi-organ failure and was close to death several times, leaving her family on an emotional roller coaster.

 

For 47 excruciating days her family waited with Lindsay’s expected death looming. Miraculously, she woke up. With no memory of the time spent in a coma, in her mind she was holding her newborn only hours ago. She knew who and where she was, but other things took much longer to know. Faced with time that kept moving when her time had stopped, she began her recovery – her long awakening.

I struggled with the beginning of this book.  It was confusing trying to figure out who was what, where, and what they were talking about.  Once I got further into the story, it started to make more sense and was much easier to finish up. The overall story was a tear-jerker.  Reading from Lindsey's point about her family and how they carried on without her, how the older girl stepped up and took care of her new sister and the rest of the family.

This is certainly not a beach read.... this is more of a quiet time read!  It was one that needed the quiet and focus.

“Available October 2013 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

*Disclaimer: My family was given this product free of charge to use and form our own opinion of and share with our readers.  The thoughts and opinions expressed about this item are strictly opinions of myself or my children.*