Love of Life: A Brooklyn Girl's Story, Paperback/Nancy Saparata Sabatino

"The lights were dim," writes the author of this compact, deeply heartwarming tale, "and I could only see shadows, but I felt a sense of warmth and peace around me. I was an infant in a bassinet. I do not remember the words my parents spoke, only the fact that I had such a wondrous feeling of love and security. I have managed, somehow or other, to preserve that feeling to this day." It's a very powerful feeling to have somehow held onto that lies at the heart of her story. Most of us fail to manage it. Nancy Sabatino's voice throughout is honest, clear-eyed, and utterly free of pretension. She's a Brooklyn girl through and through. She knows, blissfully and invariably, who she is, speaking with a vivid sense of openness and confidence. Francis Loyola was right when he said that, if you gave him a child until the age of four, you could have her back for life; and the author's character reveals itself on every page of Love of Life . She's industrious, irrepressible, and utterly devoted to her parents, her husband, and her three boys through thick and thin. Hers is a story worth reading more than once, because it reminds us in unmistakable terms what truly matters in life-and how to find wonder and joy in all our waking moments.