From Publishers Weekly
When bestselling author Sparks (The Notebook; Message in a Bottle; etc.) receives a brochure offering a three-week trip around the world, it's not hard for him to persuade Micah, his older brother, to join him in touring Guatemala's Mayan ruins, Peru's Incan temples, Easter Island, the killing fields in Cambodia, the Taj Mahal and Ethiopian rock cathedrals. His account of the trip is refreshingly honest and perceptive. At each stop, the brothers, both deeply committed to their families, cover the crucial moments in a life full of familial love and tragedy: Nick's role as the middle child always feeling left out; his marriage in 1989; the loss of Nick and Micah's mother two months later after a horseback riding accident; the death of Nick's first baby and the physical problems of his second son; the death of their father in a car accident; and the passing of their younger sister from a brain tumor. As the brothers travel together through these mythical sites and share candid thoughts, they find themselves stunned by fate's turns, realizing that a peaceful moment may be shattered at any time. Weaving in vignettes of tenderness and loss with travelogue-like observations, Sparks's account shows how he and his brother both evolved on this voyage. "Somehow there was a chance we could help each other, and in that way, I began to think of the trip less as a journey around the world than a journey to rediscover who I was and how I'? developed the way I did." Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Sibling RevelryJust over a year ago, novelist Nicholas Sparks took off with brother Micah on a jaunt around the world, then chronicled their whirlwind trip in Three Weeks with My Brother (Warner, $22). Having lost their parents to a horse-riding accident and a car wreck, and their sister to brain cancer, the men took this journey to reawaken their shell-shocked selves, hoping to recapture lost faith and shore up ailing optimism along the way.Each chapter begins with their arrival in the country du jour, then flits back in time, the transitions as subtle as swirling calendar pages in an old movie. Sparks does best when recounting his and his siblings' childhood exploits and their entertaining resourcefulness in the face of abject poverty. When their parents gave them carpentry tools as Christmas gifts instead of hiring repairmen, Micah turned the situation to his own advantage. Using his new jigsaw, the ninth-grader carved an escape route through his closet, enabling him to elude curfew.Plodding prose bogs down the travel portion of the book; Sparks's descriptions of exotic locales have all the flair of encyclopedia entries. His impression of Machu Picchu: "It was the kind of place that one should experience, not simply visit." The reader wonders what made the brothers think that an all-baggage-handled, on-the-bus-off-the-bus, we'll-set-up-a-satellite-feed-so-you-don't-miss-the-Super-Bowl tour would allow time for reflection. Certainly, Micah has no business criticizing fellow travelers for lazing on the beach when they could opt for snorkeling: "Some people just don't know how to have fun. They aren't even willing to try." Surprisingly, despite stilted dialogue and a saccharine tone, Three Weeks manages to be a moving tale of familial solidarity -- Sparks's side story of commitment to ameliorating his son's autism is downright inspiring.Kids on the BrinkUnlike Sparks, who read 40 books on autism, it took Paul Raeburn, a science journalist and former Business Week editor, four years to begin conducting the research he so deftly blends with personal experience in Acquainted With the Night: A Parent's Quest to Understand Depression and Bipolar Disorder in His Children (Broadway, $24.95).In fourth grade, Raeburn's son, Alex, began having violent outbursts that, just hours afterward, he would be unable to remember. Three hospitalizations, seven psychiatrists and six years later, Alex began to stabilize. By then, though, Raeburn was deep into the pursuit of treatment for his preteen daughter, Alicia, who was drinking, self-mutilating and repeatedly attempting suicide.Raeburn's ability to make mental health statistics and the history of American psychiatry utterly engrossing is second only to his unflinching candor about the effects of his blazing temper on his children. Certainly, he writes, his and his wife's failure to contain their fighting -- "We were never able to talk about what was happening . . . without pointing fingers at each other" -- facilitated Alex and Alicia's descents into hell.The blood-chilling accounts of Raeburn pleading with his 11-year-old son to get off the train tracks or of coming home to find his eighth-grade daughter drunk, enraged, her arms and wrists sliced, are no more horrifying than the details of the insurance companies' systematic obstruction of Alex and Alicia's treatment. Raeburn's mental health plan covered a lifetime total of 90 days hospitalization per child; three days after admission to the hospital, Alicia's therapist was forced to start planning her release. Raeburn does his children and others like them a great justice by making this book more than just a gritty exposé of their private lives. It is also a searing and eloquent indictment of America's insurance industry that ought to land CEOs in jail. Barring that, Acquainted With the Night should reignite the revolution needed to overhaul this nation's approach to health care. Family DishonorWhile Raeburn's book is a domestic call to arms, Souad's Burned Alive: A Victim of the Law of Men (Warner, $24; written in collaboration with Marie-Therese Cuny) sounds an alarm on the international stage. Its author, who hides her last name to protect her identity, has been "told" that she was born "somewhere in the West Bank. . . in either 1957 or 1958." She was raised by a mother who smothered the last seven of her 14 infants because they were girls and a father who beat her daily. Souad was not sent to school and did not understand that a world existed beyond her tiny village.When she was about 18, a man impregnated her and promised to marry her. He disappeared, and when she could no longer hide the pregnancy, her parents ordered her brother-in-law to preserve the family's honor by killing her. He set Souad on fire, burning 90 percent of her body. For two months, she rotted in a hospital, half comatose, prematurely delivering her baby in the middle of the night. The hospital was forbidden to care for her as it would have meant interfering with an honor killing.In a chance encounter that could make an agnostic believe in angels, a humanitarian worker found Souad, spirited her away to Europe, remained devoted to her and encouraged her to dictate this book. The ingrained behaviors detailed in Burned Alive are far more insidious than mere misogyny: Motherly love, that time-tested source of power and strength, has been beaten out of the women in Souad's village over generations. Unbridled aggression is the norm among men even in homes that escape the trials of poverty. More than 6,000 women are murdered "in the larger world" each year by their families in "honor crimes." Souad tells her story in an unadorned, childlike voice that reflects her continuing battle to perceive herself as an adult in full possession of her rights, a battle she wages despite being married, employed and the mother of two more children. But her tale is so shocking that it needs to be told plainly; this is not a literary effort so much as it is a rare artifact whose mere existence should be regarded as nothing less than a miracle.Arrested DevelopmentA father who was an Oscar-winning screenwriter, blacklists, letters to parole boards penned by Katharine Hepburn -- with subjects such as these, Kate Lardner's Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid (Ballantine, $23.95) ought to be a delicious tell-all. Unfortunately, in this memoir, Ring Lardner's daughter doesn't do justice to her family's difficulties.Not long after Kate's biological father, David Lardner, was killed in Europe in 1944, Kate's mother, Frances, took her kids to California and married her brother-in-law, Ring Lardner. In 1950, Ring became known as one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of movie men hauled before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, questioned about their affiliation with the Communist Party and sent to prison.At first, Lardner offers a thoughtful historical context within which we hope the rest of the story will be set: "It was never a question of Communism versus democracy, said Ring. Those who inclined toward Communism . . . were thinking of trying to institute a new economic system. It seemed as if capitalism had come to an end." Quickly, though, the memoir devolves, both in style and content.Soon Lardner is tripping over herself trying to establish a quirky voice. Her strangely overzealous musings dominate the book. She describes her dieting struggles: "The number on the scale determined success or failure in the weight-dropping endeavor. And I wanted to lose weight, I must have declared to humor the home team who'd indicated there was value in slimness." Though we are occasionally given glimpses of the troubles Frances and Ring had finding work after he was blacklisted -- two-faced producers, manuscripts submitted under pseudonyms -- Shut Up He Explained is a missed opportunity for reader, writer and editor alike. Look Back in AngerThe twist to Judith Levine's Do You Remember Me? A Father, a Daughter, and a Search for the Self (Free Press, $26), an exhaustive account of her father's descent into Alzheimer's, is that she has, by her own admission, never loved her father. An arrogant, solipsistic man, Stan Levine communicated with her entirely through fights: "He can be artfully angry, sensuously angry, wittily angry, coolly and warmly angry; he even can seem contentedly angry." Levine aims to discover the self, which "cannot exist but in relationship" and whose "demise cannot be accomplished by a brain disease alone." It is as challenging a task as any writer has ever set, and Levine, a dazzling wordsmith, finds her answers in anthropological texts, psychological studies, Cartesian philosophy and social and medical history. But all her research can't cover the memoir's glaring omission: the author's emotional reaction to her grueling situation.Levine keeps her guard up around her readers, much as she does around her family. She skillfully recounts episodes of her father unpacking boxes her mother has painstakingly packed or reports conversations with her verbally challenged father that would have done Beckett proud. (Of seals at the aquarium: "You see. They sort of dysectrate. . . . But you don't have to worry, because the money is coming out.") We can only infer that Levine is frustrated, pained, unhappy. But she is so diligent in evading the self-fascination that plagues so many memoirs that she creates a debilitating distance between herself and her readers, making this a story that is telling but not affecting. By Daphne UvillerCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
Who wouldn't want to go on a trip around the world? When best-selling novelist Sparks receives a travel brochure from his alma mater, Notre Dame, he thinks, "If not now, then when?" and asks his brother to join him. They both have family obligations, but this sounds like the trip of a lifetime, and as the reader soon finds out, they both need to relax. As they journey to faraway places, the brothers reminisce about their unusual childhood. Instead of the idealistic life readers may imagine, their early years were marked by poverty, although redeemed by their mother's great love. Their father was a graduate student working several jobs to support the family, and the boys, best friends as well as brothers, led an independent life filled with adventure, derring-do, and responsibilities beyond their years. This is a rare opportunity for readers to get to know a favorite author as Nicholas reveals the inspirations for his fiction. A must-read for Sparks fans as well as a treat for those who want to find out what makes a family strong. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
As moving as his bestselling works of fiction,Nicholas Sparks's unique memoir, written with his brother, chronicles the life affirming journey of two brothers bound by memories, both humorous and tragic.


From the Publisher
In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 37 and 38 respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world, the Sparks brothers band together to heal, to remember, and to learn to live life to the fullest.


About the Author
Nicholas Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and children.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

As moving as his bestselling works of fiction, Nicholas Sparks's unique memoir, written with his brother, chronicles the life-affirming journey of two brothers bound by memories, both humorous and tragic. In January 2003, Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world. It was to mark a milestone in their lives, for at 37 and 38 respectively, they were now the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas and Micah travel the globe, the intimate story of their family unfolds in the details of the untimely deaths of their parents and only sister. Against the backdrop of the wonders of the world, the Sparks brothers band together to heal, to remember, and to learn to live life to the fullest.

Author Biography: Nicholas Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife and children. Micah Sparks lives in California with his wife and son.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

When bestselling author Sparks (The Notebook; Message in a Bottle; etc.) receives a brochure offering a three-week trip around the world, it's not hard for him to persuade Micah, his older brother, to join him in touring Guatemala's Mayan ruins, Peru's Incan temples, Easter Island, the killing fields in Cambodia, the Taj Mahal and Ethiopian rock cathedrals. His account of the trip is refreshingly honest and perceptive. At each stop, the brothers, both deeply committed to their families, cover the crucial moments in a life full of familial love and tragedy: Nick's role as the middle child always feeling left out; his marriage in 1989; the loss of Nick and Micah's mother two months later after a horseback riding accident; the death of Nick's first baby and the physical problems of his second son; the death of their father in a car accident; and the passing of their younger sister from a brain tumor. As the brothers travel together through these mythical sites and share candid thoughts, they find themselves stunned by fate's turns, realizing that a peaceful moment may be shattered at any time. Weaving in vignettes of tenderness and loss with travelogue-like observations, Sparks's account shows how he and his brother both evolved on this voyage. "Somehow there was a chance we could help each other, and in that way, I began to think of the trip less as a journey around the world than a journey to rediscover who I was and how I'd developed the way I did." Agent, Theresa Park. (Apr. 13) Forecast: Sparks's previous books have been champions of the bestseller list, and there's no reason to believe this one isn't destined for similar success. The New Line feature film The Notebook is slated for release in June, which should drive interest further. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Sparks, the best-selling author of several novels (The Notebook; Message in a Bottle), turns his hand to nonfiction in a hybrid that mixes personal memoir with travel narrative. Chapters alternate between descriptions of the exotic locales visited on an around-the-world excursion with his brother and incidents from their shared childhood and Nicholas's adult life. The greater part of the book is devoted to memoirs that read like Sparks's novels; indeed, it would appear that he has drawn much of the inspiration for his fiction from personal experience. The travel chapters are disappointing at best. Sparks drones on about the minutiae of the trip while offering little description of the famous landmarks he visits (Machu Picchu, Taj Mahal, Easter Island) beyond the usual postcard writer's platitudes. In fact, the entire book is clich -ridden, with short, choppy sentences, unexciting dialog, and a dearth of modifiers. However, Sparks's legion of readers will undoubtedly find the details of his personal life appealing, and there is certain to be strong interest in this title. Public libraries should purchase it strictly to meet demand. Rita Simmons, Sterling Heights P.L., MI Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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