“The Possibility of Everything” by Hope Edelman Book Review

About Hope Edelman

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.

You can visit her website at www.thepossibilityofeverything.com.

Review courtesy of Tess Loiselle

Hope is a successful author who lives in the Topega canyon are of L.A.. She is married to a man named Uzi, who is a die-hard workaholic in the corporate world. They also have a beautiful 3 year old daughter named Maya.

Hope is a mother who has a nanny and housekeeper because she works from her home. Of course, she feels the guilt of this every day because she feels like she should be taking care of her child. But, she muddles through this angst with the help of her friends.

All of a sudden, her daughter develops an imaginary friend named Dodo. Dodo has a tendency to be on the evil side and forces Maya to do things that she wouldn’t normally do. This causes concern to Hope and her husband. Hope expresses her concern to her friends, Maya’s preschool teacher and her pediatrician. All agree that this is normal three year old behavior. But to Hope it seems very abnormal. It almost seems like Maya is possessed.

Uzi suggests they take a much needed vacation over Christmas, which seems like a great idea. They decide on Belize in Central America.

While they are there, they seek out a shaman (two in fact), to try and help their daughter. This seems like a strange concept at first, but the results are very interesting.

It seems to this reviewer, as I know it did to the author, to be a completely unorthodox approach to trying to get help for her daughter. But, I also understand what it is like to be a mother and sometimes desperate situations call for desperate measures. I applaud this woman’s attempt to do anything to help her child. Hope Edelman is an engaging author who places you right smack dab in the middle of her life. With intriguing detail and underlying humor, she brings to life this haunting story of trying to help her daughter.

There is also a log of backdrop to the country of Belize and the differentiations between the way they live and what we are accustomed to.

This author has written a very fine book worthy of your effort. I wish her and her family the very best.

The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman (click on cover to purchase)

About The Possibility of Everything

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.

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