![]() They are detours of discovery, a spiritual wayfinding through the wilderness of time and memory. Whether he is bobbing in a canoe in the freezing rain with his son on a Canadian lake, praying with Lakota elders in a sweat lodge in South Dakota, or teaching English in a remote Filipino village, these are not stories of arrival. “For birds, home is both verb and noun-both journey and destination.” The same is true for Fate. “Migrating birds have an internal compass that allows them to home their way back to their nesting place each spring,” he writes. Recent Reviews: ALA/BookList Review | Minneapolis Star Tribune Review | Notre Dame Magazine | Little Village Review, Q & AĪ travel memoir that ventures from his smalltown upbringing to vastly different cultures around the globe, Tom Montgomery Fate comes to define “home” not as a physical location, but as a way of belonging. In a world of shortcuts, a book that embraces the long way. The finality and unfairness of it all hits when he leaves hospital with Caroline’s belongings: ‘I’d arrived at the hospital with my wife, I was leaving with a plastic bag.’ Dan does not seek to minimise his despair in the way a soldier might understate their fear in combat.The Long Way Home: Detours and Discoveries | Tom Montgomery Fate | Trade paper with gate-folds | $19.99 | 168p | ISBN 9781948509367 That in the moments before the illness is all that remains, there is the ‘last smile’. ![]() He describes how before someone’s body dies, their personality slowly ebbs away. The honesty of Dan’s account really comes to bear during his description of the moments during and after Caroline’s death. Those who have not felt the loss themselves, but know others who have, may find his endorsement of the helpful deeds of friends and family encouraging. The Courage Bank is drawn from both home and away as he passes through enforced positivity, to steely determination and eventually to navigating the aftermath and life as a single dad. These demands are intensified by the periods of separation that service in the military entails. ![]() Many will identify with his struggle to maintain a normal life. Indeed, he must draw on the Courage Bank just to keep going.ĭan and Caroline decide from to outset to try to not let her diagnosis change everything. The relentlessness of cancer, whether present or simply as a threat, cannot be so easily contained. The Coping Box is designed to hold a moment in check. While these concepts seem to serve Dan well in negotiating the demands of war zones, they prove insufficient for the more potent challenge of coming to terms with Caroline’s illness. Emotions such as grief are too much to deal with on the spot and in the middle of a conflict, so Dan learns to put them in a box and unpack them at a later stage. The Coping Box is a mechanism for dealing with complex emotions at moments of high stress. This is fine for a while but too many withdrawals without a break to top up will leave them running on empty. Under pressure, the soldier may need to draw on extra reserves. The Courage Bank is the idea that a soldier has a certain amount of courage ‘in the bank’. Early on in his army training, one of his sergeants introduces him to two key concepts, which become recurring themes in the book the Courage Bank and Coping Box. He wants to avail you of all the facts and, like a commanding officer, let you draw your own conclusions. ![]() This book is his ‘report’ on the situation. Militaristic language and techniques seem to embody Dan’s approach to dealing with grief.
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