Books read and reviewed by Anna Cooke
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“There are moments we all wish we could have over and over and over again – the moment before everything changes.” That is the first sentence in chapter one of the book,
The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles by Laura Fahrenthold. The true story is about how she dealt with the grief after losing her husband – the love of her life and her two young daughters’ father. After coming home from the
hospital, where her husband was officially pronounced DOA, she has to tell her daughters. “He’s not coming home,” she says
to them, after they asked about him. “Ever?” one of them asks.
“You mean forever as in, ever and ever? Or just tonight?”
Laura’s late husband was Mark Pittman, the
award-winning reporter whose fight to make the Federal Reserve more accountable to taxpayers led Bloomberg News to sue the central bank and win. He was 52 when he died in 2009. Each chapter of Laura’s book opens with an excerpt from
Mark’s journals that she discovered five years after his death. A few of his entries eerily mirror his own death, as if he had already lived a previous life. The journals also bring some clarity to Laura’s feelings of Mark’s presence.
"Life is short. And fate can be cruel.
Sometimes we don't even want to be here, but we have to immerse ourselves in this life anyway. With hearts open. We get up and do it again. Go to work. Come home. Make dinner. Sleep.
That is the privilege of the living." –The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles By Laura Fahrenthold Hatherleigh Press
Laura’s writing is remarkably honest as she describes her
anger and sadness; her fears and loneliness at the thought of raising their two beautiful girls without Mark. Her story starts to take a different tone the day she picks up Mark’s ashes, a small black container she immediately begins referring to as “Mark- in-a-Box.” As her gallows humor kicks in, it becomes clear to Laura just what she’s going to do with Mark’s ashes. The storyline may sound heavy, there is a lightness to it,
thanks to Laura’s writing style. Just like life, the book offers up a good mixture of laughter and tears. There are several instances in the book where the reader may find an uncontrollable urge to laugh during what would appear to be a sad interlude. Laura has the guts to put on paper the feelings that many of us wish
22 THE NEW BARKER
Laura, HaRVey and the old soul they rescued on the road.
we could express, but are afraid to for fear of offending someone else. “While I thought his death was the greatest loss I could
ever suffer, I also realized that the greatest loss is what dies inside of us as we continue to live,” writes Laura. “One of the hardest things about losing a loved one is that a major part of you dies with them, yet you are expected to carry on as though you are still a whole person.” Six months after her husband’s death, Laura and the girls
went to Oregon on a camping trip. One night, she desperately needed the bathroom but was terrified of what she might encounter outside their tent. Then she remembered she had Mark-in-a-Box with her. “I realized I could take him with me and he would protect me.” As she walked toward
the outhouse, Mark-in- a-Box in one hand, flashlight in the other, Laura tripped. She land- ed, face first, into some of Mark’s ashes that had spilled from the box. Was this a sign that Mark wanted out of his box? Laura purchased an
RV so that she and the girls could travel the country, spreading a little bit of Mark’s ashes along the way. Between 2010 and 2014, the family of
three took four trips in HaRVey, the name they gave their home on wheels. They met strangers along the way, and reconnected with friends and family. Oh, the places where Mark’s ashes end up are, at times poignant, and other times hilarious. It is a love story that begins to bloom over the 31,000 miles
the family travels. The descriptions of their journeys, the scenery and their encounters with people are all so colorful and vibrant. They even pick up a stray dog along the way, which is ironic, since Laura previously describes her fear of dogs. “But there was something about this dog and his pleading brown eyes that I couldn’t ignore. It felt as though he had a human’s soul.” Throughout the book, Laura writes about what she
believes to be spiritual signs she notices as she and the girls begin to heal from their grief. Her favorite flower is the sunflower, which played an important role in her relationship with her husband. The flower is a symbol of adoration, loyalty and longevity. The saddest part of the book, for me, was to have it come
to an end. Even now, as I’m writing the review and picking up the book to glance at my favorite passages, it brings me to tears. The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles was one of the happiest books I’ve ever read.U
www.TheNewBarker.com
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