Broken: A Love Story

So this privileged, educated white journalist from Colorado goes to Wyoming on a four day assignment to do an article about this Native American shaman, a quadriplegic who has a reputation for taming horses and curing people. That assignment could have produced a great story, but an even better one is told in this book - how her relationship with Stanford Addison changed her life completely. How could an experienced professional journalist commit such a breach of professional objectivity and allow herself to become the center of the story? In partial answer, readers will learn about Stan's easy familiarity with the world of spirits - both good and malevolent. If you don't become a believer, you will at least find it easy to suspend disbelief. If you are familiar with twelve step programs you will recognize the author's qualities of honesty, openness, and willingness along with a healthy dose of humility. In the closing chapter I found this quote which resonated with me: "One of the best things I'd developed around Stan was a place in my mind where things were neither confirmed nor denied but remained mysterious. I mean, really, so we really think we've got it all figured out? And what kind of eyes did I want to cast on the world? The eyes of someone who is okay with not knowing everything, or the eyes of a litigator, demanding a complete set of data every time the road changed directions?" Those seeking spiritual relief from the pursuit of power and things will gain incite and inspiration from Lisa Jones' account of love and healing in a setting of political powerlessness and economic poverty.

I have been through stuff and I always forget to laugh at myself. Lisa Jones really has this one down. This book is not only touching, well written and insightful, but it is really funny...she just laughs at herself and Lord knows we ALL need to know how to do this if we are to grow at all. She allows you through her experiences to see how vulnerable she is and helps you to walk down that path...maybe just one more step because there might be some humor there. I recommend.

I have to echo Alexandra Fuller, who calls this memoir "the most important and beautiful book to come out of the West in a decade." BROKEN: A LOVE STORY is a stunning debut. Lisa Jones writes about her life-changing relationship with Stanford Addison in a way that had me belly-laughing one minute, then sobbing on the floor in child's pose the next. This book has some very important things to say about women, and race, and class, and the perpetual longing for our own sense of tribe; and for this reason I hope it continues to get the widespread attention it is already getting. Within a few pages it becomes clear that Jones has a hell of a story to tell, one that's personal, political, spiritual, historical - and brutally honest. Her prose can be arrestingly blunt at times ("...and the brain-damaged Indian and the half-melted cowboy would relax on the row of foam-upholstered chairs..."); her metaphors are dead-on accurate ("Everyone regarded one another silently, hands plunged into sweatshirt pockets like Welsh miners standing in the hail, waiting for welfare checks. Everyone was so, so sad.") If there were more stars to assign here, I would - books like this don't come around very often. We are lucky that Scribner found this writer for the rest of us.

With wit and charm, Lisa Jones takes us along on her spiritual journey, complete with a quadriplegic Native American shamen and a courtship romance. It's very easy to identify with this savvy but vulnerable author, and the reader never feels manipulated. As Stan, the shamen, teaches Jones to meet each day with humility, surrender, and heart, Jones gradually sheds her "big" personality, and lets her heart shine through. The emphasis is less on exotic metaphysical experiences and more on subtle inner transformation, and Jones pulls it off because she is a sincere, talented writer, committed to telling Stan's story and her own.