(taken from my profile on goodreads.com)
I wish so much that I could rate this like most - maybe all from what I've seen at a glance - of the others here. I really, really expected to "like" this book. I'm interested in everything 9/11 related. But I was bored. I feel awful saying that but the fact of the matter is that I don't know Lauren. I don't know Greg.
Lauren was in a burn unit and basically each entry consisted of one of the following sentences:
Lauren's breathing on her own more.
Lauren's signs are better.
Lauren had a fever but it's under control.
Lauren is "rock steady".
Maybe this makes me a mean person but that's boring. If this was someone in my family of among my friends then his emails would have been a Godsend. But that's not the case. I'm reading his emails, one after the other, years down the road. And it's boring.
How many times can I read about someones temperature?
There are no pictures included at all. And I do mean NONE. Now, I can understand not including Lauren's photo (even though there is a family thumbnail-like photo on the front cover of my edition) but none of Greg? None of Tyler, their baby son? None of their apartment even with its close proximity to the towers? None?
That seemed off to me to say the least.
Greg (and Lauren according to Greg's words) seem like wonderful, wonderful people and I wish them both nothing but the best. I'm sure Greg's emails were anxiously awaited by friends and family alike at the time. But being a stranger reading just didn't do it..
This book is written by the husband of a survivor of the 9/11 attacks. As there were so few people that survived, their stories have been largely ignored. It was both heartbreaking and uplifting. It truly gave another prespective to that tragedy.
Early on the morning of Sept.11, 2001, Lauren Manning-a wife, mother of a ten-month old son, and a senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald-came to work at One World Trade Center. As she stepped into the lobby, a fireball exploded from the elevator shaft, and in that split second her life was changed forever.
Lauren was burned over 82.5 percent of her body. As he watched his wife like in a drug-induced coma in the ICU of the Burn Center at New York Presbytarian Hospital, Greg Manning began writing a daily journal. In the form of emails to family, friends, and colleagues, he recorded Lauren's harrowing struggle-and his own tormented efforts to make sense of an act that defies all understanding. This book is that email diary: detailed, intimate, inspiring messages that end, always, as if a prayer for a happy outcome: Love, Greg & Lauren.
