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Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite
B. Lou Guckian unflinchingly tells her story from an abused childhood to a broken person to healing in Heart Knocks: From Strayed to Straight, a searing memoir. Her childhood memories maintain the image of a mother with mental illness and a father who prided himself on stoic endurance. The memoir follows the author through years of self-destruction to spiritual redemption. She writes about her rebellion as a teenager, her marriage to an addict, the divorce, and sexual exploration. Then the loss of her brother, Roger, to a drunk driver, and her father to abusive neglect and cancer. She identifies twelve spiritual deaths that stole her life and plunged her into codependency, alcoholism, and promiscuity before redeeming herself through the twelve-step program of AI-Anon. The journey of her recovery is filled with powerful insights and spiritual awakening; she reconciles her identity and returns to heterosexuality after many years of lesbian relationships.
Heart Knocks: From Strayed to Straight is the story of how life can break us in ways we never expected, but the author shows us that we can always reclaim our identity and worth after being broken beyond repair. She shows the power of following our spiritual path with how well she explores her Catholic faith and the spiritual exercises of her Native American tradition. B. Lou Guckian examines the inheritance of trauma and celebrates the possibility of radical metamorphosis in her memoir, in a voice that is raw and that defies sentimentality, even when narrating some of the most disturbing episodes and events in her life. The idea of organizing this book through twelve spiritual deaths was fascinating, and it felt like the author consciously invited me to use the same method when doing inner work. This book is filled with life, emotion, faith, and with places that are described in a way that makes you feel as though you were seated beside the author. I was swept away by the spiritual currents that run through this narrative.
