Like Kurt Cobain, Nick Traina lived for punk rock (his bands made two CDs, Gift Before I Go and 17 Reasons), succumbed to heroin addiction, and died of suicide. His mom, Danielle Steel, takes us through her 19 twister-like years with Nick in a memoir more affecting than her potboiler novels. Like his AWOL addict father, Nick had good looks, bad behavior, and a yen for the feminine. Five days before he died, he phoned a woman he saw in a centerfold and had a new girlfriend by nightfall. But his fun was ever haunted by manic depression. At age 11, he was a bed wetter who ate all the Tylenol and Sudafed in the house. He first considered suicide at 13, as Steel learned by reading his diaries after his death.

There is tension in this story--one doctor told Steel if she could get Nick to live to 30, he'd probably live a normal life span. (For example, Nick's troubled dad resurfaced, sober, soon after his son's death.) And Steel conveys a sense of the intelligence Nick used to conceal his learning disability, and the irreverent charm that alternated with irrational rages. Oliver Sacks has urged us not to ask what neurological disease a person has, but what sort of person the disease has got hold of. Steel gives us a vivid sense of the costs of the disease to a family--and of the person who was Nick Traina. --Tim Appelo


Amazon.com Audio Review
It's hard to listen to any story that deals with the loss of a child, but Danielle Steel's memoir of her son, Nick Traina, is both tender and engrossing. In this unabridged audio version of His Bright Light, Steel leads us through Nick's battle with manic depression and her fight to help him survive. Although Steel herself narrates the introduction, actress Traci Godfrey, who portrays the author's strong emotions without becoming maudlin, reads the book. Anyone who has known a loved one affected by depression will identify strongly with Ms. Steel's passionate recollections of her son's life. (Running time: 9.5 hours, two cassettes) --Sharon Griggins


From Library Journal
From a precocious childhood to his suicide at age 19, Nick Traina's life was a hellish roller coaster of impulsive and self-destructive behavior caused primarily by manic depression. Steel (The Long Road Home, Audio Reviews, LJ 10/1/98) painstakingly details Nick's frequent school suspensions, his wild swings of emotion, his attempts at success as a punk rocker, and the various treatments she sought in a futile effort to allow the second of her nine children to enjoy a normal life. While the renowned romance novelist is at times melodramatic and the pace is sometimes hampered by the inclusion of lengthy letters and poems, this is a compelling and surprisingly objective portrait of the devastating effects of mental illness. Steel's immense popularity will place this in demand, but it will also be of interest to young adults and those interested in personal accounts of manic depression.?Susan McCaffrey, Haslett H.S., MICopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Godfrey's voice perfectly captures the romantic, wistful yearnings and sorrows of mother/martyr Danielle Steel as she recollects the descent and untimely death of her son, Nicholas Traina, to bipolar disorder. Godfrey brings depth to the glorified family life of the author, who often wallows in celebrity self-pity. Where Steel's descriptions are often circular and trite, Godfrey lends a soft poignancy to the text. And when Steel portrays her son as perfect and whines about the lack of available resources to help him, Godfrey brings credibility to Nick's side of the story through her heartfelt readings of his journal. She beautifully expresses the fear, frustration and anger he must have experienced due to mental illness. H.L.S. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Review
"A powerful and personal story....His bright light is Danielle Steel's legacy and tribute to  her son, as well as haunting depiction of manic-depression."
--The Saturday Evening Post

"Danielle Steel has written a spellbinding account of her son 's struggle with bipolar illness....Valuable insights....We come away with a heightened sensitivity that perhaps only a writer of this distinction could convey, of what it is like to try to cope with a child with a severe psychiatric disorder....This is a book about what we can do--as parents, as physicians, as human beings."
--Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

"Reading His Bright Light moved me to tears as the memoir captures so vividly the ferocious nature of mental illness....Sharing [Nick's] story will save lives. His Bright Light will make a difference for countless others."
--Laurie Flynn, Executive Director, NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)

"[A] searing portrayal of the loss of her 19-year-old son . . . Ms. Steel's heartfelt homage to her son may very well help others save a life."
--The Dallas Morning News


The Nick Traina Foundation has been established to benefit mental health, music, child-related causes, and other charitable organizations for assorted causes, and other charitable organization for assorted causes. All of the author's proceeds and agent's fees from this book will go to the foundation, which will also receive direct proceeds from the publisher for all copies sold.


Review
"A powerful and personal story....His bright light is Danielle Steel's legacy and tribute to  her son, as well as haunting depiction of manic-depression."
--The Saturday Evening Post

"Danielle Steel has written a spellbinding account of her son 's struggle with bipolar illness....Valuable insights....We come away with a heightened sensitivity that perhaps only a writer of this distinction could convey, of what it is like to try to cope with a child with a severe psychiatric disorder....This is a book about what we can do--as parents, as physicians, as human beings."
--Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

"Reading His Bright Light moved me to tears as the memoir captures so vividly the ferocious nature of mental illness....Sharing [Nick's] story will save lives. His Bright Light will make a difference for countless others."
--Laurie Flynn, Executive Director, NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)

"[A] searing portrayal of the loss of her 19-year-old son . . . Ms. Steel's heartfelt homage to her son may very well help others save a life."
--The Dallas Morning News


The Nick Traina Foundation has been established to benefit mental health, music, child-related causes, and other charitable organizations for assorted causes, and other charitable organization for assorted causes. All of the author's proceeds and agent's fees from this book will go to the foundation, which will also receive direct proceeds from the publisher for all copies sold.


Book Description
"This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death.

"I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it. I want Nick's life to be not only a tender memory for us, but a gift to others. . . . I would like to offer people hope and the realities we lived with. I want to make a difference. My hope is that someone will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it."
--Danielle Steel

From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful, personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him--and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans.

At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel's tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all.

With a new afterword for the paperback edition.



From the Inside Flap
"This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death.

"I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it. I want Nick's life to be not only a tender memory for us, but a gift to others. . . . I would like to  offer people hope and the realities we lived with. I want to make a difference. My hope is that someone  will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it."
--Danielle Steel

From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful, personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him--and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans.

At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel's tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all.

With a new afterword for the paperback edition.


From the Back Cover
"A powerful and personal story....His bright light is Danielle Steel's legacy and tribute to her son, as well as haunting depiction of manic-depression."
--The Saturday Evening Post

"Danielle Steel has written a spellbinding account of her son 's struggle with bipolar illness....Valuable insights....We come away with a heightened sensitivity that perhaps only a writer of this distinction could convey, of what it is like to try to cope with a child with a severe psychiatric disorder....This is a book about what we can do--as parents, as physicians, as human beings."
--Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

"Reading His Bright Light moved me to tears as the memoir captures so vividly the ferocious nature of mental illness....Sharing [Nick's] story will save lives. His Bright Light will make a difference for countless others."
--Laurie Flynn, Executive Director, NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)

"[A] searing portrayal of the loss of her 19-year-old son . . . Ms. Steel's heartfelt homage to her son may very well help others save a life."
--The Dallas Morning News


The Nick Traina Foundation has been established to benefit mental health, music, child-related causes, and other charitable organizations for assorted causes, and other charitable organization for assorted causes. All of the author's proceeds and agent's fees from this book will go to the foundation, which will also receive direct proceeds from the publisher for all copies sold.




About the Author
Danielle Steel is the internationally bestselling author of Irresistible Forces, Granny Dan, Bittersweet, Mirror Image, The Klone and I, The Long Road Home, The Ghost, Special Delivery, The Ranch, Silent Honor, Malice, Five Days in Paris, and other highly acclaimed novels.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue

This will not be an easy book to write, but there is much to say, in my own words, and my son's. And as hard as it may be to write, it's worth doing, if it helps someone.

It is hard to encapsulate a being, a very special being, a soul, a smile, a boy, a huge talent, an enormous heart, a child, a man, in however many pages. Yet I must try, for him, for myself, for you. And I hope that as I do, you will come to understand who he was, and what he meant to all those who knew him.

This is the story of an extraordinary boy, with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death. It is early days for me yet, as I write this. He has been gone a short time. My heart still aches. The days seem endless. I still cry at the sound of his name. I wander into his room and can still smell his familiar smell. His words still echo in my ears. He was alive only days, weeks ago . . . so little time, and yet he is gone. It is still impossible to absorb or understand. Harder still to accept. I look at his photographs, and cannot imagine that all that life and love and energy has vanished. That funny, handsome face, that brilliant smile, the heart I knew better than my own, the best friend he became to me, can they truly be gone? Do they live only in memory? Even now, it remains beyond my comprehension, and is sometimes beyond bearing. How did it all happen? How did we lose him? How could we have tried so hard, and cared so much, and loved him so enormously, and still have lost him? If love alone could have kept him alive, he would have lived to be three hundred years old. But sometimes, even loving with all your heart and soul and all your mind and will just doesn't do it. Sadly, it didn't do it for Nick.

If I had three wishes, one would be that he had never suffered from mental illness, the other would be of course that he were alive today, but the third would be that someone had warned me, at some point, that his illness--manic depression--could kill him. Perhaps they did. Perhaps they told me in some subtle way. Maybe the inference was there, and I didn't want to hear it. But I listened carefully to everything that was said to me over the years, I examined every nuance, and to the best of my knowledge and abilities, heeded every warning. My recollection is that no one told me. Certainly not clearly. And it was a piece of information that I desperately needed. I'm not sure we would have done things any differently, but at least I would have known, been warned, of what the worst case could be.

His illness killed him as surely as if it had been a cancer. I wish I had known that, that I had been warned how great the risk was. Perhaps then I would have been better prepared for what came later. I'm not sure that in the minds of the public it is clear that bipolar disease, manic depression as it's more commonly called, is potentially fatal. Not always certainly, but in far too many cases. Suicide and accidents appear to be the greatest cause of death for manic-depressives. Neither are uncommon. If I had been told that he had cancer of a major organ, I would have known with certainty how great the risk was. I might have understood how short his life could be, how tragic the implication. I'm sure I would have fought just as hard, just as long, just as ingeniously, but I would have been better prepared for what came later. The defeat might not have been quite as startling or as stunning, though it would surely have been just as devastating.

The purpose of this book is to pay tribute to him, and to what he accomplished in his short life. Nick was an extraordinary human being, with joy and wisdom, and remarkably profound and astute perceptions about himself and others. He faced life with courage and panache and passion and humor. He did everything "more" and better and harder. He loved harder and more, he laughed a lot, and made us laugh, and cry, and try so hard to save him. No one who met him was left unimpressed or unaffected. You couldn't meet him and not give a damn. He made you care and feel and want to be as big as he was. He was very big. The biggest.

I have written this book to honor and remember him. But there is yet another purpose in writing this book. I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it. I want Nick's life to be not only a tender memory for us, but a gift to others. There is much to learn here, not only about one life, but about a disease that afflicts between two and three million Americans, one third of whom, it is believed, die from it, possibly as many as two thirds. That is a terrifying statistic. The statistics are somewhat "soft" on the issue of fatalities, because often death is attributed to other things, for instance "accidental overdose" rather than suicide, which is determined by the actual amount of fatal substances ingested, rather than by clear motive.

It is debatable as to whether or not those who have died could have been saved, or if those who will die can be. But what of those who will live, and have lived, and are still living? How do we help them? What can we do? Sadly, no one, and certainly not I, has the magic answers to solve the problem. There are different options, different solutions, a variety of ways of coping. But first, you have to see the problem. You have to understand what you're dealing with, to accept that what you're dealing with is the equivalent of not just a bellyache, but liver cancer. You have to know that what you're facing is serious, important, dangerous, and potentially fatal.

Somewhere out there, in apartments, and homes, and hospitals, in ordinary jobs and lives, and not just psychiatric wards, are people coping with a terrible struggle within them. And alongside them are the people who know and love them. I would like to reach out here, and to offer hope and the realities we lived with. I want to make a difference. My hope is that someone will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it. Maybe you can make a difference, even if I couldn't. If it is true that one third of manic-depressives die of this disease, and its related burdens, then two thirds will live. Two thirds can be helped, and can live a useful existence. And if possible, I would like Nick's story, and Nick's life, to help them, to serve them, perhaps to learn from our mistakes, and our victories.

The greatest lessons I learned were of courage, and love, energy, ingenuity, and persistence. We never gave up, never turned away, never turned on him, never let him go, until he let us go, because he couldn't fight the fight any longer. We not only gave him CPR when he attempted suicide, but we tried to keep his soul alive in every way we could, so that he could keep fighting the fight along with us. And the real victory for him, and for us, was that we gave him a quality of life he might otherwise never have had. He was able to pursue a career he loved, in music. He saw victories that few people do, at twice his age, or who live a great deal longer. He knew the joy and excitement of success, and also knew better than most the price he paid for it. He had friends, a life, a family, a career, he had fun and happiness and sorrow. He moved through the last few years of his life with surprising grace, despite the handicaps he was born with. And we were incredibly proud of him, as a man, a musician, and a human being. He was a talented, brilliant young man with a disease. But the disease did not stop him from being who he was, or us from loving him as he was. In retrospect, I think it was one of the best gifts we gave him. Acceptance of who he was, and unconditional love. In our eyes at least, his illness was only one facet of him, not the whole of him.

There is no denying that it is a hard, hard road, loving someone with bipolar disease. There are times when you want to scream, days when you think you can't do it anymore, weeks when you know you haven't made a difference and only wish you could, moments when you want to turn your back on it. It is their problem, not yours, and yet it becomes yours if you love the person suffering from it. You have no choice. You must stand by them. You are trapped, as surely as the patient is. And you will hate that trap at times, hate what it does to your life, your days, your own sanity. But hate it or not, you are there, and whatever it takes, you have to make the best of it.

I can only tell you what we did, what we tried, what worked, and what failed. You can learn from what we tried to accomplish, and develop better avenues that work for you. We tried a lot of things, and flew by the seat of our pants some of the time. There are no rule books, no manuals, no instruction sheets, no norms. You just have to feel your way along in the dark and do the best you can. You can't do more than that. And if you're very lucky, what you're doing works. If you're not, it won't, and then you try something else. You try anything and everything you can until the very end, and then all you have is knowing how hard you tried. Nick knew. He knew how hard we tried for him, and he tried too. We respected each other so much for it. We loved each other incredibly because we had been through so much together, and we cared so much. He and I were very much alike actually, more than we realized for many years. He said it in the end. He made me laugh. He made me smile. He was not only my son, but my best friend. And I am doing this for him, to honor him, and to help those who need to know what we learned, what we did, what we should have done, and shouldn't have done. And if it helps someone then it is worth reliving it all, and sharing his joys and his agonies with you. I am not doing it to expose him, or myself, but to help you.

Would I do it all again? Yes. In a minute. I wouldn't give away these nineteen years for anything in the world. I wouldn't give up the pain or the torment or the sheer frustration, or the occasional misery of it, because there was so much joy and happiness that went with it. There was nothing better in life than knowing that things were going well for him. I would not have missed a single instant with him. He taught me more about love and joy and courage and the love of life and wonderful outrageousness than anything or anyone else in my life ever will. He gave me the gifts of love and compassion and understanding and acceptance and tolerance and patience, wrapped in laughter, straight from his heart. And now I share these gifts with you.

Love is meant to be shared, and pain is meant to be soothed. If I can share your pain, and soothe it with the love Nick shared with all of us, then his life will be yet one more gift, not only to me and his family this time, but to you.

It was Nick who made it all worthwhile, and worth fighting for. He did it for us, and for himself, and we for him. It was a dance of love from beginning to end. His was a life worth living, whatever the handicaps and challenges. I think he'd agree with that. And I have no doubt of it. I have no regrets, no matter how hard it was. I wouldn't have given up one second with him. And what happened in the end was his destiny. As his song says, "Destiny . . . dance with me, my destiny." And how sweet the music was. The sound of it will forever live on, just like Nick, and our love for him.

He was a priceless gift. He taught me everything worth knowing about life and love. May God bless and keep him, and smile with him, until we meet again.

And may God keep you safe on your journey.

d.s.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him - and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans." "Nick rocketed through life like a shooting star. Signs of his illness were subtle, often paradoxical. He spoke in full sentences at age one. He was a brilliant, charming child who never slept. And at first, even his mother explained away his quicksilver moods. Nick always marched to a different drummer. His gift for writing was extraordinary, his musical talent promised a golden future. But by the time he entered junior high, Danielle Steel saw her beloved son hurtling toward disaster and tried desperately to get Nick the help he needed - the opening salvos of what would become a ferocious, pitched battle for his life." "Even as he struggled, Nick's charisma and accomplishments remained undimmed. He bared his soul in his journal with uncanny insight, in searing prose, poetry, and song. When he was finally diagnosed and treated, it bought time, but too little. In the end, perhaps nothing could have saved him from the insidious disease that had shadowed him from his earliest years.

FROM THE CRITICS

KLIATT

I was intrigued by this Danielle Steel book because it is nonfiction, definitely outside of her usual fare. It also had been praised by groups advocating for mentally ill citizens. This is the story of Steel's son Nick Traina, a young man who killed himself at 19 after struggling for years with manic depression. The book is extremely personal and quite sad—as you read, you get wrapped up in the boy's charm and talent; however you also know how it is going to end. The writing is straightforward and the book reads quickly, telling the story of Steel's struggle to get help for Nick and support for herself and her family. The book includes photos, writings by Nick, and guidance for others facing the same challenges. It presents many questions, including how can we help young people like Nick, what sort of support systems individuals and families need to keep their children safe, and, importantly, what do people do who don't have the financial means that Steel does? This book could also benefit young people as Steel does a good job telling the story from Nick's point of view as much as possible. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1998, Dell/Delta, 306p, 24cm, illus, $12.95. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Sarah Applegate; Libn., River Ridge H.S., Lacey, WA, May 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 3)

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING