The Life She Was Given A Moving and Emotional Saga of Family and Resilient Women

Wonderful book highly recommend it to any and all readers!

I had a really hard time deciding on whether to lose give this book a one star or five stars review, so I waited about a month before leaving my review. I would only have given it one star because it actually traumatized me and left me depressed. But I’m giving it five stars because if a book can draw you in enough to make you literally gasp or affect you enough to make you cry then it did its job of captivating the reader.SPOILER ALERT:This book was definitely a page turner. After looking at some of the reviews of people saying that it wasn’t believable because nobody sells their child to the circus they would be wrong. During the depression, things like that really did happen. People would sell their children to others if they couldn’t afford to feed them and if children had some type of disfigurement, they would sometimes sell them to a circus because they wouldn’t be accepted in society. The world was a much different place back then. The part of the book that ripped my heart out was the brutal death of the elephant. I was reading that part late at night in bed, and it literally made me gasp and then cry. I didn’t sleep that night, because I could not get the image of what I read out of my mind. It bothered me for days. I kept trying to tell myself it was all fiction, and how could the author even think of some thing so barbaric. But as I read the note from the author after the book’s ending , I learned that she got the idea from something that really had happened many years ago , which broke my heart all over again. Most fiction books have a happy ending. This book was different in that one of the main characters, who was good person you cheered on because she deserved so much more, had a terrible, tragic ending while the other, although somewhat unsettling, had a happy ending. But that is the reality of real life.

The pain and hardship that shaped both women in their own times was so real and alive. They had their moments of beauty as well. Their stories unfolded parallel to each other and culminated in the unexpected. Each of them had a character arc that was inspiring and heartbreaking as well. Beautiful.

An amazing story that has left me utterly speechless….there are few stories that both bind and tear your soul, this is one of them. I could not recommend it more for those who are daring enough to journey an emotional masterpiece.

When I started this book, I couldn’t put it down. I was up most of the night. The resilience of Lily and her daughter was breathtaking. I didn’t want the book to end.