Everything all at once A memoir

Steph Catudal

Book - 2023

"When Steph Catudal met her husband Rivs, she thought that the love, stability, and warmth she shared with her husband had finally dispelled her pent-up anger and grief over the loss of her father and her faith. But when Rivs became ill and was put into coma at the height of the pandemic, the painful memories of her childhood--watching her father die of cancer--came flooding back. Written with lush lyricism, Steph's account of how this crisis forced her to confront her past is raw, illuminating, and heartbreaking: her father's death that wrecked her faith in God and jumpstarted a decade of rebellion, including running away from home and living out of a van at age sixteen, struggling with alcoholism, and delving into drugs to ...ease her pain. Sitting by Rivs's bedside, she grappled with the memories of the past and the uncertainties of the future while reckoning with the unknowns of her husband's illness. Rivs would endure a grueling eighty-four days in a medically induced coma, eventually undergoing chemo for a similar illness that stole her father. 'Everything All At Once' is a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting reflection on resilience and a powerful reminder that we can find healing no matter how broken we are"--

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Subjects
Genres
Autobiographies
Published
New York, NY : HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers [2023]
Language
English
Main Author
Steph Catudal (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
228 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780063253131
Contents unavailable.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

During her husband's near-fatal illness, the author reckons with faith, loss, and the meaning of existence. Married to endurance athlete Tommy Rivers Puzey, Catudal, a freelance writer, omits his full name in her debut memoir, referring to him only as Rivs. The book begins when the author learned, at 13, that her father had terminal lung cancer. Raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catudal had been "taught that god was a merit-based interventionist--one who would save me from my mortal sins if only I did my part." However, she writes, "the more I prayed, the worse he became." After her father's death, the author "boxed up faith, hope, and spirituality and labeled them with a strict note to self in the archives of my mind: Rotten. Do Not Touch." Following this tragic story, Catudal focuses on her husband's devastating 2020 illness and, relatedly, the life-affirming lessons she's learned by virtue of pain. When Rivs, an accomplished runner who once finished the Boston Marathon in 2 hours, 18 minutes, "a qualifying standard for Olympic trials," became sick, he refused to go to the hospital. Eventually, he spent more than three months in the ICU (he was in an induced coma for a month), where Catudal and their three daughters' visits were severely limited due to Covid-19 restrictions. As Rivs battled lung cancer and lymphoma, the author blogged about her experience; some of these posts are included near the book's end. She repeatedly shares her realizations, many of which border on cliché--e.g., "Love is light--only fully realized when it is reflected"; on love, "The only thing in this world that is truly pure and purely true. And in that singularity, I found god. Which is to say, I found myself." Catudal writes far more about Rivs' near death than about his astonishing survival. A heart-wrenching, sincere memoir weighed down by insipid revelations such as, "Everything simply was." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.