Gail Caldwell's 2010 memoir, Let's Take the Long Way Home, explored the losses that defined her fifth decade: her parents, her best friend and her beloved Samoyed, Clementine. She came into her 60s determined to move on, including starting over with a new puppy. But living with and training an active young dog forced Caldwell to confront just how difficult "moving on" was becoming for her in a physical sense. Caldwell had been compensating for the effects of polio her entire life, and this was getting harder every day. New Life, No Instructions is the story of how she learned she didn't have to continue to compensate, and of how a common medical procedure enabled her to see her life, literally, from a new perspective.
Caldwell's medical history led her and her caregivers to an exotic explanation for her painful limp and poor balance; for years, they had been trying to address the symptoms of what they believed to be the relatively rare Post-Polio Syndrome. In 2011, a new doctor identified her problem as something far more ordinary: her right hip had completely deteriorated, and she needed replacement surgery.
New Life, No Instructions is an affirming and hopeful reminder that sometimes the stories that we tell ourselves turn out to be wrong, but they can lead us to something very right. Caldwell's brief (under 200 pages) memoir of a year of unexpected midlife transformation is clear-eyed and plainspoken. She vividly conveys her sense of wonder and possibility at being in such a new place at such an unexpected time, and it's hard to resist sharing that feeling. --Florinda Pendley Vasquez, blogger at The 3 R's Blog: Reading, 'Riting, and Randomness