A Slender Thread: Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis

Perhaps my interest in psychology, wildlife and science make me a bit biased here, but I adore this book. It is one of those that I will continuously return to. I wasn't planning on reviewing this book, but I was compelled by the one star reviews that complained about Ackerman's backyard observations. Perhaps they missed the "slender thread" (forgive the play on words) but it was about so much more than a few squirrels and birds. It is difficult to explain in words, but the balance between the heartache in the book and Ackerman's personal experiences created an amazing and comforting feeling that I enjoyed each time I picked up the book. I do not recommend this book as a introduction to this author, but those who already love Ackerman's style will delight in it. Her style is very personal and her books often have personal anecdotes and stories which I very much enjoy, but if that sort of thing isn't for you, you may not enjoy this book.

Not just an account of Ackerman's volunteer work on a suicide hotline. Like all of her books, it leads to connections and meditations on many subjects. Sit back, relax, and enjoy where this book meanders.

by a masterful wordsmith with moving passages about crisis line, life, squirrels, etc.

In reading A SLENDER THREAD, something amazing happened: my already worshipful esteem for Ms. Ackerman increased dramatically. A fan from the first words of the bestselling A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES, I didn't think it possible for Ms. Ackerman's boundless curiosity and breathtakingly poetic prose to get any better. But in this new book, the metaphors and the subjects they describe are indeed large as life. After donating a laptop computer to her local crisis prevention chapter, Ms. Ackerman is lured into giving a speech to its staff, and ultimately becomes a staff-member herself, as a volunteer answering phones for the suicide prevention hotline. Her oddessey of aiding those in distress is beautifully undertaken and even more beautifully described. At first, the seemingly fearless Ackerman (who has a private pilot's license, scuba dives, is an accomplished horsewoman, and has even sexed crocodiles) is nervous about her abilities at crisis intervention. After the several weeks of training, she still feels apprehensive about responding to callers' crises. But like everything else in the author's incomparable ouevre, life beckons and blazes tantalizingly, and she handles adeptly the callers on the other end of that slender thread. Some people are mired in bogs of depression, others struggling with abusive relationships, while a few are at the brink of suicide. In the stunning climax, Ackerman, from her isolated perch at Suicide Prevention's offices, rescues two desperate souls in a single evening: a teen only seconds from a fatal leap, and a frequent caller whom Ackerman finally realizes from faint clues has already ingested a potentially fatal dose of pills. In reading this late chapter, one's pulse races as frantically as the author's. But in between her shifts, Ackerman celebrates in her typically effervescent way, many of nature's splendors. From weekend bicycle rides around Upstate New York's Finger Lakes region, a two-year study of her backyard squirrels, and a rollicking full moon cross country skiing trek to the strains of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," among other delightful rituals. Ackerman is an impassioned participant in all of life's rich pageants. (And this sentence, quiet as it is, jolts one out of blind admiration for this intrepid soul: "Some of our counselors, like me, are ones who survived, people who lived to see their lives turn around, and who relish life more because they came so close to losing it.") Yes, a joyous life, but not without its share of troubles. Fortunately, the worst our fiercely talented explorer experiences in these pages are a couple of broken toes. One from a misstep on a neighbor's porch, the other a casualty of her own wheelchair. In A SLENDER THREAD Diane Ackerman has outdone herself. She has turned her poetically tuned naturalist's curiosity to our own fragile species, and composed an elegant song of survival, endurance, and brilliant life

As a director of a crisis line that is similar tothe one Diane writes about I feel that she captures the feelings of a volunteer. The workers not knowing what the next caller may want or need. It may be to talk or it may be to say goodbye.She covers all the callers we are so fimilar with the alcoholic, the abused spouse , hopeless teenager, the bogus sex callers looking for a female voice , the chronically mentallyill and the sucides that we all fear. Diane makes me more aware of my feelings about the thousands of calls that our crisis line has taken and in a way assures me that we do make a dfferance,