Title: The Possibility of Everything
Author: Hope Edelman
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publicattion Date: September 15, 2009
Hardcover: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0345517012
Genre: Memoir

About the book:
From the bestselling author of Motherless Daughters, the real-life story of one woman’s search for a cure to her family’s escalating troubles, and the leap of faith that changed everything for her. In the autumn of 2000, Hope Edelman was a woman adrift, questioning her place in her marriage, her profession, and the larger world. Feeling vulnerable and isolated, she was primed for change. Into her stagnant routine dropped Dodo, her three-year-old daughter Maya’s curiously disruptive imaginary friend. Confused and worried about how to handle Maya and Dodo’s apparent hold on her, Edelman and her husband made the unlikely choice to bring her to Mayan healers in Belize, hoping that a shaman might help them banish Dodo-and, as they came to understand, all he represented-from their lives. Examining how an otherwise mainstream mother and wife finds herself making this unorthodox choice, The Possibility of Everything chronicles the magical week in Central America that transformed Edelman from a person whose past had led her to believe only in the visible and the “proven” to someone open to the idea of larger, unseen forces. A deeply affecting and beautifully written memoir of a family’s emotional journey, it explores what Edelman and her husband went looking for in the jungle-and what they ultimately discovered-as parents, as spouses, and as ordinary people-about the things that possess and destroy, or that can heal us all.

My Review:

The Possibility of Everything is a brilliant memoir filled with such lyrical and descriptive prose the reader is immediately transported into the world of Hope her husband Uzi, and their 3-year-old daughter Maya. Hope tells her family’s story with such a pure voice the reader truly cannot help but feel for her as a mother, wife, and friend. The memoir weaves a timeline from their home in California, beginning in September 2000 and ending with their Christmas trip to Belize in December 2000. While the Hope struggles with her role as wife, writer, and mother, her daughter invents an imaginary friend, Dodo. The appearance of Dodo rapidly begins to bring havoc and terror into the home. The story is not simply about a family struggling with how to help their young daughter, it is one of a woman learning to accept becoming a woman and mother without her own mother’s help as well as the tale of a marriage brought closer by a seemingly simple vacation.
Hope Edelman manages to capture the reader’s attention from her first sentence and holds the reader until the very last word. A novel of courage, faith beyond understanding, and unwavering love, The Possibility of Everything, is a definite must read.

About the Author:

Hope Edelman holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University, and a master’s degree in English from the University of Iowa. She is the author of five nonfiction books: the international bestseller Motherless Daughters (1994), which was translated into seven languages; Letters from Motherless Daughters (1995), an edited collection of letters from readers; Mother of My Mother (1999), which looks at the depth and influence of the grandmother-granddaughter relationship; Motherless Mothers (2006), about the experience of being a mother when you don’t have one, from HarperCollins; and The Possibility of Everything (2009), her first book-length memoir, set in Topanga Canyon, California, and Belize.
Hope has lectured widely on the long-term effects of early parent loss. She has appeared on national and local television throughout the U.S., including the Today show and Good Morning America, and has also appeared on TV and radio in Toronto; Vancouver; London; Sydney; Melbourne, Australia; and Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, New Zealand.
She began her journalism career with a part-time job at Outside magazine, and soon after interned for three months at the Salem Statesman-Journal in Salem, Oregon. Her first full-time editorial job was at Whittle Communications in Knoxville, Tennessee. From there, she went on to the University of Iowa, earning a master’s degree in creative nonfiction writing in 1992, one of the first of its kind.
Since then, her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, such as the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, Glamour, Child, Parenting, Seventeen, Real Simple, Self, The Iowa Review, and The Crab Orchard Review, and many anthologies, including The Bitch in the House, Toddler, Blindsided By a Diaper, and Behind the Bedroom Door.
She is the recipient of a New York Times Notable Book of the Year designation and a Pushcart Prize for creative nonfiction. Nearly every July you can find her at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City, and periodically at other conferences and festivals throughout the U.S.
Hope plays piano and guitar (sort of); cooks a mean French Toast; and has discovered an unexpected aptitude for sixth-grade math. She lives in Topanga, California, with her husband, their two daughters, a fat cat named Timmy (”No, Mom, tell them he’s buff!”) and their pet tarantula, Billy Bob.

Hope Edelman’s The Possibility of Everything Book Tour ‘09 began on Dec. 1st and will end on Dec. 16th as part of Pump Up Your Book Promotion’s 12 Days of Christmas Virtual Book Tour Special. You can visit Hope’s blog stops during the month of December to find out more about this great book and its talented author.

I received a copy of The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman from Pump Up Your Book Promotion as part of the tour. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.