Review - Grace Grit and Gratitude by Eve Hillary

Posted on September 15, 2008
Filed Under Articles, Media

Book Review of Grace, Grit and Gratitude – Grace Gawler
By Eve Hillary (September 14 2008)
Grace Gawler’s memoirs, Grace, Grit and Gratitude kept me reading well into the night. The book is written in an easy style that rewards the reader with insights into Grace as a woman, mother, wife, carer, healer and pioneer of the original supportive care movement for cancer patients in Australia.
A uniquely Australian story, Grace brings alive the 1950’s Australia of her childhood. Her love of animals drew her into vet nursing. She teams up with a young vet and they set up a seemingly idyllic Victorian country vet practise. Almost immediately after their romance develops he is diagnosed with a usually fatal type of cancer. Their relationship unfolds in the shadow of his illness. Meanwhile Grace has grown into a beauty and comes to the attention of a modelling agency. She forgoes lucrative modelling opportunities in order to remain her boyfriend’s full time carer and they marry doctors give him only a few weeks to live. Later their marriage becomes the fertile ground from which Grace discovers the depth of her ability to love and to heal. In time, he becomes well again and for a while, they flourish and are further blessed with four children. Their journey into his healing and their joint establishment of the Gawler Foundation is alone worth reading. But what was originally a lifeline for Ian comes at a price for Grace.
When Ian leaves the marriage, Grace descends into her own life-and-death battle with a life-threatening condition and near destitution. Alone, she undergoes over sixteen surgeries while struggling with the day to day challenges of being a single parent to four children. Her ordeal imposes many losses including her position at the Gawler Foundation. Few would have survived her hardships but Grace always drew on a mysterious hidden reserve - the same one she used to heal others.
The rest of the book shows how Grace healed herself and reclaimed her identity. It reveals, perhaps for the first time, her unique contributions to the Gawler Foundation - and how she has subsequently forged her own solo career in supportive cancer care as a healer and author of self-help books for cancer sufferers. Perhaps her biggest achievement is founding cancer support in Australia. Many health professionals are involved with cancer sufferers but none offer ongoing support and the unique healing that Grace has pioneered over the past thirty years.
Not merely an autobiography of a unique Australian, this book offers useful information and deep insights for cancer sufferers, their carers, family and friends. It shows how seemingly insurmountable obstacles can be overcome and the miracle of healing is revealed in a way that people can experience it, reproduce it and derive inspiration from it.
I finished Grace’s book late on Saturday night; that night I dreamt about the country practise animal stories Grace had vividly told, and for a night I was in her life. I woke up just before her more demanding challenges came in the story. I think it’s fair to say that her book was engaging. Ernest Hemmingway said once: ‘Courage is Grace under pressure.’ Courageous is not too strong a word to describe this woman.
At the very least, this book is a good yarn with a ‘happy-ending’, as Grace is happily re-partnered. At most, it’s an awe-inspiring Australian story that will improve supportive cancer care in this country.   It is certainly however, a story of redemption – well worth the read.

Eve Hillary BHSc. is a health practitioner, freelance medical writer and author on issues pertaining to health care, environmental health and social justice. She has authored two books, Health Betrayal and Children of a Toxic Harvest. She lives, writes and practices in NSW.