Took My Breath Away

Learning to Breathe Again:  Choosing Life and Finding Hope After a Shattering Loss by Tammy Trent

Memoir/Christian

This is one of the most heartbreaking and inspriational stories I have read in a long time.  It is a Christian inspiration memoir but you don't have to be a Christian to appreciate the story.  While I don't normally read this kind of book, the story of her experience was so fascinating.

Tammy's life growing up was no fairy tale.  Abandoned by her father, she desperately yearned for affection from her stepfather but he was often cold and distant and her mother just didn't seem to care.  Tammy turned to Christianity and met a young man at a Bible study class.  The book chronicles how Tammy and Trent (she took his first name for her stage name) fall in love.

Tammy and Trent had a fairy tale romance love-affair and ending...but no happily ever after.  Just when their life was going so great, they decide to go on a tropical vacation.  Trent liked to scuba dive so he and Tammy went for a dive in a ceyote.  Trent dove down but he never came back.  Tammy's story of waiting for him, the panic and ultimate realization that he isn't coming back, is heartbreaking.  When his body is found the next day, Tammy tries to fly back home, but the date is September 11, 2001.

While much of the story focuses on Tammy's career as a gsopel star and Trent's job as her manager, the real strength of the book was for was seeing how she endured in the light of which seems so unendurable.  A beautiful, tragic story worth reading.