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Summary
Summary
As the obituary writer in a spectacularly beautiful but often dangerous spit of land in Alaska, Heather Lende knows something about last words and lives well lived. Now she's distilled what she's learned about how to live a more exhilarating and meaningful life into three words: find the good. It's that simple--and that hard.
Quirky and profound, individual and universal, Find the Good offers up short chapters that help us unlearn the habit--and it is a habit--of seeing only the negatives. Lende reminds us that we can choose to see any event--starting a new job or being laid off from an old one, getting married or getting divorced--as an opportunity to find the good. As she says, "We are all writing our own obituary every day by how we live. The best news is that there's still time for additions and revisions before it goes to press."
Ever since Algonquin published her first book, the New York Times bestseller If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name, Heather Lende has been praised for her storytelling talent and her plainspoken wisdom. The Los Angeles Times called her "part Annie Dillard, part Anne Lamott," and that comparison has never been more apt as she gives us a fresh, positive perspective from which to view our relationships, our obligations, our priorities, our community, and our world.
An antidote to the cynicism and self-centeredness that we are bombarded with every day in the news, in our politics, and even at times in ourselves, Find the Good helps us rediscover what's right with the world.
"Heather Lende's small town is populated with big hearts--she finds them on the beach, walking her granddaughters, in the stories of ordinary peoples' lives, and knits them into unforgettable tales. Find the Good is a treasure." --Jo-Ann Mapson, author of Owen's Daughter
" Find the Good is excellent company in unsteady times . . . Heather Lende is the kind of person you want to sit across the kitchen table from on a rainy afternoon with a bottomless cup of tea. When things go wrong, when things go right, her quiet, commonsense wisdom, self-examining frankness, and good-natured humor offer a chance to reset, renew, rebalance." --Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted
"With gentle humor and empathy [Lende] introduces a number of people who provide examples of how to live well . . . [ Find the Good ] is simple yet profound." -- Booklist
"In this cynical world, Find the Good is a tonic, a literary wellspring, which will continue to run, and nurture, even in times of drought. What a brave and beautiful thing Heather Lende has made with this book." --John Straley, Shamus Award winner and former writer laureate of Alaska
"Heather Lende is a terrific writer and terrific company: intimate, authentic, and as quirky as any of her subjects." --Marilyn Johnson, author of The Dead Beat
Author Notes
Heather Lende has contributed essays and commentary to NPR, the New York Times , and National Geographic Traveler , among other newspapers and magazines, and is a former contributing editor at Woman's Day . A columnist for the Alaska Dispatch News , she is the obituary writer for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines and the recipient of the Suzan Nightingale McKay Best Columnist Award from the Alaska Press Club. Her previous bestselling books are Find the Good , Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs , and If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name . Lende was voted Citizen of the Year, Haines Chamber of Commerce, in 2004. Her website is heatherlende.com.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lende hones the skills she learned as an obituary writer for the town of Haines, Alaska, in her memoir, capturing big and small moments to tell her life's story. She teases out great moments within her life and the people she encounters through her work, reinforcing the book's message, which is reflected in the title. Her skills as a writer are not as useful, however, when it comes to narrating the audio version of her memoir. Though she reads with passion in some passages, at other times her voice is flat, and she seems uninterested in what she is reading. The narration would be more powerful in a professional narrator's voice. Despite this, listeners can still take much from the message and the compassion in the writing. An Algonquin hardcover. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An unlikely source delivers tidbits on living well.An obituary writer might be the last person readers would expect to provide wise advice, but Alaska Dispatch News columnist Lende (Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs: Family, Friendships, and Faith in Small-Town Alaska, 2010, etc.) turns out to have just the right perspective, as her job centers on finding and writing about the best part of each deceased person's life. In these short observations, the author examines what makes the people in the small town of Haines, Alaska, tick. She follows the intricate weave of relationships between family and friends that creates a close-knit community, and she expands on these ideas to create nuggets of insight universal to everyone. "Find the good" is the essence of living a noble, meaningful life, and Lende explores this mantra in a variety of ways. She writes of the fisherman who refused a good-paying state job so he could spend more time with his family; of the man who drowned because he had no life vest, which prompted the town to raise money for personal floatation suspenders for every fisherman; and of the woman diagnosed with terminal cancer who continued to teach because it brought her the greatest joy and forced her to live in the moment. Each brief life story is a distillation of the highs and lows of that person's life, and Lende considers the many unexpected ways in which ordinary people touched one another, even if they were not always aware of it. Honest and simple yet full of lasting strength, the author's prose demonstrates what makes a life better rather than worseincluding something as simple as picking up heart-shaped stones on the beach with a grandchild. Optimistic, slightly humorous reflections on living a fully engaged, meaningful life. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
You can learn a lot about life from death. As a newspaper obituary writer in a small town in Alaska, Lende has summed up her guidance for approaching life in the words find the good. Much like the phrase itself, the book is simple yet profound. Lende's insight stems from any number of moments, both with her family and with members of her close-knit community. With gentle humor and empathy, she introduces a number of people who provide examples of how to live well, from the fisherman who is always willing to put work aside for a visit, to the Swedish woman who exults in the tidy hotel she runs. Lende, author of the best-selling If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name (2005), knows how to keep things grounded enough in everyday struggles to avoid becoming overly saccharine. Her homespun stories will speak meaningfully to readers. The overarching message is that the life we get is precious, as obituary writer Lende knows so well, and should be lived in such a way as to create much good to be remembered by.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Working as an obituary writer could get you down, if you were the kind of person who let it. Lende isn't. Instead, she has used her job chronicling the deaths in her hometown, Haines, Alaska, for the last two decades to foster a literary bent (this is her third memoir) and a determinedly sunny outlook. In chapters with titles that double as admonitions - "Pretty Good Is Better Than Perfect," "Wear a Personal Flotation Device," "Listen to Your Mother" - she teases wisdom from the lives her obits celebrate as well as from her own experiences as a mother and grandmother. Because Haines is so tiny, the dearly departed are usually Lende's friends and neighbors, adding poignancy to a narrative that can read like a cross between Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon tales and "Chicken Soup for the Soul." Time and again, Lende traces tragic life arcs: a friend who receives a diagnosis of terminal breast cancer, a fisherman who slips off his boat and drowns, pulled away by a swift current from the life ring his daughter had tossed him. Though these meditations are marred by the occasional hollow platitude, each conveys the unsentimental conviction that the good in our lives shouldn't be overshadowed by their inevitable end. Lende finds bountiful evidence that the human response to suffering "binds us together across dinner tables, neighborhoods, towns and cities, and even time." Cold comfort? Perhaps. Still, her insistence that there is solace to be found even during life's darkest moments can be as bracing as a polar bear plunge.
Library Journal Review
Read by the author, this story of life in small-town Alaska imparts a sense of community to listeners. Lende (Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs) writes obituaries for her local paper, the Chilkat Valley News. Weaving stories of her own family life with those of her friends and neighbors, Lende reminds listeners that it is necessary to search for the good in situations and people and that there is always something about which to be positive, regardless of how dire circumstances may appear. As examples, she shares her methods for gathering necessary information from the families of the recently deceased and how she seeks out stories to affirm their lives. Her words serve as a reminder to break the habits of negativity. VERDICT A quick listen, this book is an inspiration.-Cheryl Youse, Moultrie, GA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.