The Book of Jesse: A Story of Youth, Illness, and Medicine

The Book of Jesse by Michael Rowe is the story of a family's love and suffering as they watch and try to help their loved one struggle to stay alive. It is a book in which the author has shared his thoughts and feelings with us. In doing so, he has put into words what many of us have experienced in one way or another. As a retired member of the madical profession, I highly recommend it be read by everyone in the medical field. It will enhance and renew their empathy. To the author I say "God Bless you and your family for all that you did for Jesse." - Gloria M. Coughlin

Life on an intensive care unit is such as to induce family members to forget that there is, or has ever been, normal life elsewhere. It is the great merit of Michael Rowe's book to remind the reader that his son Jesse had always attempted to build such a normal life for himself, even as a child battling numerous illnesses. Jesse did this by creating many drawings, and Rowe includes both reproductions and verbal analyses of them in the book. The effect is to normalize Jesse for us, to re-humanize him, to lift him out of the patient role, as he lies teetering between life and death on the ICU. I took care of my father during his critical illness of five-and-a-half years, and I can attest that the book eloquently captures the minute-by-minute feel of intensive caregiving, of love at full emergency arousal.

With a gentle but sure hand, Rowe guides us on a tour of a young man's talent and illness, and a father's profound hope and loss. The book is illustrated with pictures drawn by Jesse, which seem to range from a fascination with comic book heroes, to anguished representations of mortality--some of which are on par with works from the Vienna Secession. As such, Rowe sets upon a mission of collaboration with his late son, and introduces us to Jesse in the most intimate and graceful of fashions. At one point in the text, Rowe describes how he pretends to haggle over a painting of Jesse's with his other son, Daniel; although Rowe knows this is contest he must lose, he engages it to watch "the heat of [Daniel's] love draw Jesse from his shadows." This book represents a similar endeavor that meets its goals, and in so doing, effectively draws Jesse from the shadows of illness, medicine, and time, to our conscience.

The Book Of Jesse: A Story Of Youth, Illness, And Medicine is Michael Rowe's fatherly and heartfelt remembrances and personal testimony about his son Jesse, who battled with physical illness and lost his life at the untimely age of 19, after two failed liver transplants. The Book Of Jesse presents cherished memories of a bright and thoughtful young man, the deep bond between father and son, and a journey of trying to understand life and loss. The Book Of Jesse is highly recommended reading, especially for those who appreciate having to deal with love and loss within their own lives and family.

The Book of Jesse is a beautifully written and enormously moving account of a father's relationship with his dying son and the medical community in which he has put his hope and faith along the way. It is at times overwhelmingly sad but also filled with humor and imbued with the extraordinary spirit of Jesse, a talented young artist and very special human being who faces his illness with enormous courage and resilience. I highly recommend this book, particularly to anyone with a child with a serious illness or with an interest in modern medicine and its challenges and limitations.