Review: Rise: How A House Built A Family

'' A lake of coffee couldn't compete against the effects of the sleep deprivation I'd been facing for weeks.''

 

★★★★☆

I never pegged myself as the one to read memoirs or biographies or anything akin to them. So turning the first page was a feat for me. I have to say I'm more than positively surprised how Rise turned out. Not that I find Cara's story a positive one, but simply incredibly laid out on paper.

Alternating between rises and falls, the story flows between the present and past, revealing reasons behind their behaviours in the present. I found the order sometimes a bit confusing, since the scenes in the past, the Falls, were not always in chronological order. In the end it didn't matter.

The process of building the house also kept the story going, even if nothing was really happening. When the construction site was at a standstill, so were their lives. And then suddenly everything started moving forward again, gaining the lost time back.

Rise wasn't a straight description of the family's life during their healing process from the abusive and mentally ill ex-husbands/fathers, it was something more. Writing the story as if it was fiction gives the reader the sense that in the end everything will end up well and no obstacle is too big to overcome. But the story is true, all the lumber and piles of plywood were true. Every episode of crying and terror, built their character, and in the end they built a house with it. And that, if anything, is incredible.