I picked up this book because the picture on the cover looks like my own daughter. When I read the back notes and learned that she was dead, I quickly put it back down. I didn’t want to read about Eleanor Vincent’s devastating loss. For some reason, though, I felt compelled to try to comprehend her experience.
What I found was indeed distressing, but inspirational at the same time. The book is in many ways a postmortem tribute to Vincent’s daughter and an exploration of the healing effects of organ donation. Taken in its entirety, however, this book is really about a journey through the process of healing from a lifetime of psychological traumas. The extreme grief over her daughter’s sudden death and the struggle to cope with it lead Vincent down buried paths of pain going all the way back to her childhood. She emerges transformed. She lost her daughter, but therein found herself, and we can’t help but applaud her success.
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Laurie, I want to thank you (belatedly) for your courage in reading and reviewing my book. I'm so glad you picked up on the themes of recovery and transformation. Swimming with Maya is the true story of my journey as a mother, what kept me going after the loss of my first born when she was a young adult, and what sustains me today. It's been rich, complex, and worth sharing.
Eleanor Vincent
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