The Path We Share

This is the book that any grandmother, mother, sister, or friend will want to give to a new bride...and to herself. How did a farm boy from North Dakota and a willful 17 year old from South Dakota forge a relationship that has lasted more than six decades? How did they withstand tragedy, unprecedented social upheaval, breast cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and 400,000 miles of travel together? And why do they say, after all that has happened, And so we lived happily ever after? Lois Hjelmstad, award-winning author of Fine Black Lines and The Last Violet, now shares her poignant story of a marriage that has thrived against the odds. Richly detailed, with a deep understanding of life, this memoir is a gift to any couple--unmarried, newly married, and those wishing to reclaim or retain what they have had. Some bits of core advice from This Path: Nurture your primary relationship tenaciously. Fall in love with each new person your mate becomes. Create a post-parenthood marriage. Reinvent your life to fit changing personal and societal circumstances. Foster a lifelong sexual connection. 

Lois was a stay at home mother, enjoying her family when in 1990 the discovery of three primary cancers in her left breast shocked her and her family!  Lois taught piano, and music theory learning along the way to become a super teacher. Her encounter with breast cancer sparked a writer, as she started writing poetry and her experiences in a way that was unusual in its honesty. She revealed in a book and in newspaper articles how it felt to lose such an important part of her anatomy. And even  appeared nude from the waist up on the cover of the October 1993 issue of Colorado Woman News in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A lecture tour then took this couple on a 400,000 mile journey as she spoke to groups all over the country, bringing understanding and hope to both those who had expienced breast cancer and those who brought healing.

I enjoyed reading This Path We Share very much. This book is a very readable, captivating, and perceptive review of the author's 60 years of married life. Its narrative reflects the author's sense of humor as well as her analytic and candid commentary on the joys, sorrows, conflicts, milestones, and mundane events associated with marital and family life.  She honestly shares her wisdom as well as her vulnerability, which makes us readers feel as though our lives, with all of our joys and sorrows, have great meaning, too.   The book confronts questions and conflicts and offers suggestions for their resolution in an open and sensitive manner, and invites the reader to reflect on his/her own personal family and marital relationships.  I only know one couple that has made it that far, and that's my husbands grandparents,  we celebrated their 60th anniversary last year!  After so long together, they really are a part of each other.  Congratulations to Lois Hjelmstad for another great book, and her 60 years of marriage.

Thinking to the Holidays, think about all the women in your life, I know they would really enjoy this read!

Buy it:  Amazon.com, Goodreads, ITunes, Mulberry Hill Press, Podio Books

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