cover image Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse's Life

Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse's Life

Mary Jane Nealon. Graywolf, $15 trade paper (224p) ISBN 978-1-55597-590-6

With a seasoned nurse's practicality and a poet's skill with words, Nealon (Immaculate Fuel; Rogue Apostle) relates her escape from personal tragedy by treating patients near death%E2%80%94children with cancer, patients with HIV/AIDS%E2%80%94and subsequent healing. Nealon, who lives in Missoula, Mont., contrasts her confidence as a nurse, helping others to transcend suffering, with her failings off the job (e.g., leaving home when her brother was dying; running from her mother's criticism), pointing to epiphanies (forsaking her Laura Ashley wardrobe, leaving a coveted starfish on the beach) that taught her to cast off sadness and led her to pursue poetry, earn an M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College, and care for her parents before they died. Evocatively told, Nealon's stirring story provides insight into the small acts that ease great pain. (Aug.)