I recently finished the non-fiction book One Life to Give by Mary Akers and Andrew Bienkowski. I became acquainted with Mary because she completed the same MFA program I did, although a few years before me. She runs a wonderful writer’s “office” on Zoetrope. Mary was nice enough to answer a few questions for my blog.
For the readers of my blog, who may not be familiar with your book “One Life to Give” can you give us a brief description?
Sure, I’d be happy to. One Life to Give is actually the story of my co-author Andrew Bienkowski’s amazing experiences. In 1939, at the start of WWII, Andrew was banished to Siberia from his Polish homeland by Stalin’s forces. They traveled for weeks by cattle car only to be dumped out into the frozen wasteland, basically to starve, freeze to death, or die from disease. When he was five years old, he witnessed his grandfather starving to death on purpose so that the children would have enough food to survive. Andrew’s Siberian experiences affected his whole approach to life, and One Life to Give describes the life lessons he learned (in story form), then shows how he implemented those lessons during his 40-plus years as a clinical psychotherapist. The main focus of his life has been helping others to heal from their own emotional traumas and giving back his grandfather’s incredible gift. As a child, Andrew experienced the sorts of horrific things that most of us can only imagine, and yet he chose to reframe what he and his family endured and use that knowledge to help others. It’s his gift back to a world that has given him so much.
Can you give us an idea of how the process of co-writing a book went?
Andy and I worked really well together. He first showed me a rough outline of chapters that he wanted to cover in the book. It was a great start for what he envisioned as a book that would essentially be a manual on how to help others. There was nothing about Siberia, but when we first met he told me some of the very fascinating stories he remembered from that time and I knew that they needed to be part of the book, too. I wasn’t sure how that would happen, and initially Andy said he didn’t even want include his Siberian experiences (he’s very modest) because he didn’t want it to become an “All About Me!” book. Fortunately, I managed to convince him that his Siberian stories could serve as a “way in” to the message he wanted to impart. Since the dawn of civilization, humans have used stories as a way to pass on information, spread a message, or even inspire others to change. Like the Parables, or Grimm’s Fairy Tales, we remember the story first then the message follows naturally.
I mostly took Andy’s outline, expanded it, reorganized it, and we collaborated on deciding which stories from Siberia would go best with which life lessons. He was so easy to work with—a real joy. If I got things wrong, he gently helped me to correct them. He was always generous and never critical. For my part, I tried very hard to do his family justice, having never met them, but having developed a great admiration for their character, spirit, and closeness. By the time the book was done, I felt like I knew them. It is my fond hope that readers will feel the same way when they finish the book.
After the manuscript was completed, who found the agent, presented the book etc? Tell us a little bit about getting the book into print.
Well, we tried to do it together at first, but since Andy doesn’t have a computer and doesn’t know much about the business of publishing that aspect fell to me by default. We first had to write a detailed proposal in order to sell the book, which was like pulling teeth for me, but I knew it had to be done. So I ran through my full compliment of curse words…then I sat down and did it. Like so much of writing—and life—it’s all about sitting in the chair and just showing up to work. After the proposal was completed, we sent more than 100 queries to agents, and even with that volume, there wasn’t a single US agent willing to take us on. Our lovely and talented UK agent, Isobel Dixon was willing, however, and she managed to sell the book to Australia’s Allen & Unwin Inspired Living imprint. It first came out as Radical Gratitude and Other Life Lessons Learned in Siberia in March of 2008. We then sold it to the UK, Canada, Germany, Poland, and now finally we are appearing in our own country. Sometimes the front door doesn’t open, but in my experience, there’s always a back door or a side window.
After the book was accepted. Did you have to go through revisions and how did that work with you having a co-writer?
For the Australian version, we did very little in the way of revisions. They were happy with the manuscript and only wanted some minor tweaking and line editing. It was published as that same version in all the other countries except the US. We had a fair number of changes to make for the US version, though. We deleted the conclusion, took out about 30 quotations, added author’s notes, added a Reader’s Guide at the end, received a great foreword from Dr. Gordon Livingston that we gratefully included, and did a thorough clean-up that really made it shine. Most of the revisions/changes were either shared in terms of responsibility, or I would make them and then run them past Andy who could add to or dispute them. The toughest thing was probably the new title. We agonized over that for what felt like ages.
Let’s speak a little about promotion for the book. Did you do this as a team?
Yes. We make a good team because we have different talents. Andy has a great network of friends and he does lots of in-person promotion that is mostly local in its scope. He’s secured us some really good opportunities to appear at events in western New York. I’m not from this area, and have fewer local contacts, but I spend a lot of time on the Internet and have lots of friends in other parts of the US and world, so I spend my promotional hours on-line, emailing reviewers, listing it on websites, doing interviews and appearing on blogs. J
Your first chapter is titled Radical Gratitude. Could you explain what Radical Gratitude is?
Radical Gratitude is the notion that we can learn to be grateful even for the difficult things that happen to us in our lives because they teach us how to be better human beings. It’s a version of the old adage, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” When we embrace the idea of radical gratitude, we can learn to look back at the difficult experiences in our lives and see how they have transformed us—made us smarter, more resilient, more empathetic toward the suffering of others. Radical Gratitude also gives us hope during the darkest times–hope that we will someday be able to look back and realize what we have learned, that we will ultimately gain from our present pain. The grace lies in the lessons that the struggle imparts.
What did you enjoy most about writing this book?
I think I most enjoyed getting to know Andy’s family. Granted, they have all been dead for many years, but hearing his stories and writing about his family in such an intimate way really brought them to life for me. His grandfather selflessly starved to death in order to leave enough food to keep the children from starving. His educated, refined mother braved tending the village cows that terrified her because she was paid one loaf of bread a week to do so. Too old to work, his grandmother took up fortune telling as a way to bring in scraps of food to feed her family. Andy went into the empty fields and picked up one grain of wheat at a time after the harvesters had left, sometimes spending all day obtaining a single small cup of wheat. Even his three-year-old brother smuggled pieces of bread home from the communist school to share with his starving family. They pulled together and never lost hope, and they survived what many others didn’t.
How will this book help others?
It will inspire them to think in terms of the big-picture things in life—the things that we often take for granted, like persistence, faith, hope, love, and the importance of gratitude, even for the difficult things that happen to us. Anyone can relate to Andy’s story of survival and the case histories from his years in clinical practice are examples of the struggles everyone faces. And the many timeless and inspiring quotations share a universal wisdom that speaks to everyone.
Mary Akers‘ fiction, poetry and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in various international journals such as Mississippi Review Online, Bellevue Literary Review, The Fiddlehead, and Brevity. She has published a short story collection, Women Up On Blocks, (which I highly recommend!) and her recent work often focuses on the intersections between art and science, including such topics as diverse and timely as the environmental movement and the struggle for human and animal rights.
