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Saturday, February 4, 2023
Take My Hand by Dolen Valdez
“How dare they? Our bodies belonged to us. Poor, disabled, it didn’t matter. These were our bodies, and we had the right to decide what to do with them. It was as if they were just taking our bodies from us, as if we didn’t even belong to ourselves.”
“Sometimes love can kill you, just like hate. You love too hard and you can lose yourself in other folks’ sorrow. You hate too hard and you know the rest of that story. Take care of yourself. You can’t help others if you’re down and out. I have to remind myself of that all the time.” “I never thought a nun would tell me I could love too hard.” “Only Jesus’s love is infinite, Miss Townsend.”
Let me start by saying this book was inspired by the true story of the Relf sisters. The author told a story that is all too familiar to happenings in the Deep South that involve minority patient populations. Growing up you would hear stories like these especially from small rural towns. I’m so happy the author put pen to paper to give life to this story.
The novel is told in two timelines by Civil Townsend in 1963 and 2016. Civil is a new nurse and works at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. Civil was a young woman with hopes of changing the world her until she met erika and India. Their situation can be summed up by two things.
1. The government providing unregulated drugs to women without proper knowledge. I blame big Pharma but that is a discussion to have with me all by itself.
2. Taking advantage of language barriers in poverty stricken areas where many people didn’t have more than a third to fifth grade education. A time where the letter X was used as a signature.
Civils life was never the same some may say she went into savior mode. What’s was she running from invoking herself on the lives of others outside of her medical duty? She was running away from making decisions and living with the ones she had already made. I loved her growth through out the book. I wish the flow of the book would have been better for me. Jumping from past to present made me want to skip ahead chapters to not wait to see what happened next. I started reading the book and then I started with the audio book on my drives to work. I like the book version better. I found it difficult to focus on the story as the narrator spoke during the Audio version causing me to take more breaks and longer to finish the book.
I do look forward to giving more of the authors books a try in the future. Mrs. Valdez I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet you at the Louisiana Book Festival. I hope you visit Louisiana again soon. I look forward to adding your book to my special coffee table bookcase in my waiting room for my patients to hopefully enjoy this story you brought to life.
- Dr. Books
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