The Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic is the third book in a quartet of memoirs documenting Nora Gallagher's quest to live her faith in the modern world. In Things Seen and Unseen, Gallagher chronicled her experiences as a "tourist" amid Christianity. In Practicing Resurrection, she reflected upon her brother's death and considered entering the Episcopalian religious life. Now, Gallagher seems baptized by fire when a routine eye exam--one she almost cancels--propels her into a web of uncertainty about her failing eyesight.
The story is structured in three parts: "Drowning" reveals a serious inflammation of Gallagher's optic nerve. In "Limbo," she is suddenly at the mercy (or lack thereof) of doctors and a medical establishment unable to offer a concrete diagnosis. After a year of searching for answers, Gallagher and her husband finally make a pilgrimage from their home in Santa Barbara, Calif., to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where specialists offer insight and treatment options. In "Recalled to Life," Gallagher begins to process the ambiguity of her condition, but not before additional complications impede her progress.
Mystery, confusion and doubt infuse the unmitigated honesty of this memoir that maps the broad implications of disability. As she loses aspects of her sight, her ability to read and her faith, 60-year-old Gallagher examines her life and mines her liberal Christian beliefs. Church fails to provide comfort and a sense of connection, but words do, and Gallagher artfully employs them to write a beautifully rendered portrait of the frailty of the human condition. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines