Contemporary Authors

1. Wild and precious life https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022234 Ziegler, Deborah, 1956- author. Wild and precious life / Deborah Ziegler. First Emily Bestler Books/Atria hardcover edition. New York : Emily Bestler Books/Atria, 2016. xiii, 331 pages : color illustrations ; 24 cm RC280.B7 Z54 2016 ISBN: 9781501128516 (hardback)1501128515 (hardback)9781501128523 (trade paperback)9781501128530 (ebook)

• Die Welt ist ein schöner Ort: Der Weg meiner Tochter in einen würdevollen Tod (German Edition) - March 20, 2017 Goldmann Verlag, https://www.amazon.com/Die-Welt-ist-ein-sch%C3%B6ner-ebook/dp/B01N6DSAI3/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

• Deborah Ziegler Author - http://deborahzieglerauthor.com/about/

  Deborah Ziegler was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on July 18, 1956. Her mother was a British immigrant and her father was a child of the Oklahoma dust bowl. One of four children, she received her BA in Secondary education. Deborah went on to enjoy teaching for 15 years in both of her majors, English and Science. She received her MA in Science Education in California, where she currently lives with her husband, Gary, and two cavipoos named Bogie and Bacall. Ziegler started a successful woman-owned engineering company after retiring from her teaching career.Deborah gave birth to one amazing and purpose-filled child named Brittany Lauren Maynard. Brittany died at age twenty-nine using Oregon’s Death with Dignity law. She died of a massive brain tumor. Being Brittany’s momma is without a doubt Ziegler’s proudest accomplishment in life. Currently, Deborah speaks on behalf of end-of-life options and the Death with Dignity cause in the hopes that one day all terminally ill Americans will have the right to aid in dying if they so choose.

• Simon and Schuster - http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Wild-and-Precious-Life/Deborah-Ziegler/9781501128516

  Deborah Ziegler was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on July 18, 1956. She currently lives in California with her husband, Gary, and two cavipoos named Bogie and Bacall.

• The SAn Diego Union Tribune - http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/books/sd-me-ziegler-maynard-20161103-story.html

  Quoted in Sidelights: “She told me several times, ‘I won’t be able to give you a grandchild, but I’m giving you this,’ educating people and advocating for the terminally ill,”
  Brittany Maynard's mom writes book to honor promise to dying daughter
  Deborah Zeigler
  Deborah Ziegler holds a photo of her daughter, Brittany Maynard, as she receives congratulations from Ellen Pontac, after the California Assembly approved a right-to die measure in September 2015. (Associated Press)
  John Wilkens John WilkensContact Reporter
  Deborah Ziegler made promises to her dying daughter. One by one she’s trying to keep them.

  Her daughter was Brittany Maynard, who reignited a long-simmering debate about physician-assisted suicide in America after she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in early 2014 and ended her life 10 months later. She was 29.

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  Ziegler, a former teacher and engineering entrepreneur who lives in Carlsbad, said one of the promises she made was to carry her daughter’s legacy forward. It’s why she testified at legislative hearings and marched in demonstrations to support California’s “death with dignity” law, which took effect in June.

  And it’s why she’s written “Wild and Precious Life,” a memoir published Oct. 25.

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  “She told me several times, ‘I won’t be able to give you a grandchild, but I’m giving you this,’ educating people and advocating for the terminally ill,” Ziegler said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C., where she was on a book tour. She’ll be at Warwicks’s in La Jolla for a reading Wednesday night.

  The memoir is an often-wrenching look at a mother desperate to protect her only child and stumbling through denial, anger and grief as Maynard is diagnosed with a tumor, has an operation that fails to slow the cancer, and then moves with her husband from California (which at the time had no right-to-die law) to Oregon (which did).

  Maynard went public with her decision, drawing millions of people to YouTube videos and media coverage that explained why she wanted to be the one to determine when enough was enough. She wrote an essay for CNN: “There is no treatment that would save my life, and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time I had left.”

  Ziegler’s memoir recounts what happened away from the spotlight, the “blissful” moments she and her daughter shared on trips, and the fiery, confusing moments when her daughter called her names and took swings at her.

  The book also offers a glimpse into the final moments of Maynard’s life, into the bedroom of a rented home in Portland, Ore. Surrounded by her mother, husband and a handful of other loved ones, Maynard dictated a Facebook message — “Goodbye world. Spread good energy. Pay it forward!” — and then drank a glass of water mixed with barbiturates.

  In its starred review, Booklist called the memoir “painfully honest” and said its “frank account of their struggles will be comforting to others facing this difficult decision.” Kirkus described it as “a graceful and touching gift of love and posthumous devotion from mother to daughter.”

  But the book has also drawn criticism from Maynard’s husband, Dan Diaz, who wrote on Facebook that his wife had given him “sole ownership” of her story — he’s working on a film about her life — and that she was especially worried about what Ziegler might do.

  “I love my mother very much,” he quoted Maynard as saying, “but I don’t want her to be a storyteller about me.”

  ‘Everything changed’

  “Wild and Precious Life” takes its title from a poem, “The Summer Day,” by Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver. Maynard was a fan of her work.

  The poem ends with these lines: “Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

  Ziegler said she promised her daughter what she’d do with hers is live it. In Maynard’s last note to her mom, she wrote, “Seize each day of beauty on this gorgeous earth.” She gave Ziegler a pair of tennis shoes with the words “Live your dream” on them.

  Ziegler also promised her daughter she would go to Machu Picchu in Peru. Maynard had visited the ancient Incan city and loved it. On Nov. 1, 2015, the one-year anniversary of her daughter’s death, Ziegler went there with her husband, Gary.

  She’d been working on her book before the trip, but once there, “everything changed.” She felt her daughter’s presence and heard her voice, she said. She was comforted by the experience, “felt toxicity, anger, and grief rushing out of me.”

  In the book, she writes, “A smile widened on my tear-soaked face. I had been the best mother I knew how to be. I had given birth to, nurtured, and raised a tempestuous, beautiful soul who tried to make this broken planet a better place to live.”

  Ziegler said she came home and started writing again “and things just poured out.”

  The hardest part of the book, she said, wasn’t recounting Maynard’s final moments. “Of course, her death was the most painful thing in my life, but writing about it, I knew she had accomplished what she set out to do, which was to have some say in the way she died.”

  Instead, the difficult part was “revisiting moments where I felt I hadn’t been all I should be and I had to be honest and talk about that. I think I’m pretty transparent about my denial and my inability to discuss death with her for quite some time.”

  It was also hard reliving the day, near the end, when Maynard cussed at her, called her names and hit her, Ziegler said. For a while, she didn’t think she would be allowed at her daughter’s death bed.

  But she was, and now Ziegler believes there’s a reason Maynard went after her. “When you’re angry at the universe, angry at what fate has dealt you, I think you might choose to lash out at the person you know will love you no matter what,” she said. “In an odd way, Brittany beating me was an honor.”

  Whose story?

  In his Facebook post, Diaz, Maynard’s husband, said he was keeping a promise to Maynard, too — a promise to “safeguard her story.” He said his wife was worried Ziegler would write a book and instructed him to release a statement if she did.

  The book, he wrote, “does not appropriately tell the story of Brittany Maynard. In particular, the scenes from the last 10 months of Brittany’s life obviously reflect Deborah’s own opinions, concerns and thoughts. Deborah’s book does not speak for Brittany and there are numerous passages that are inaccurate.”

  In response, Ziegler said, “I’m very sure of what I’m doing, and I base that on the many conversations I had with Brittany, 30 years of loving Brittany, talking with her, arguing with her. I’m very solid in what I’m doing. And very sure of my legal and moral rights.”

  Although she said she feels “bullied,” she doesn’t want to get into a back-and-forth with Diaz “because it takes away from what Brittany died trying to do. It draws all the attention away from her bravery and her openness, draws all the attention away from the struggle and puts it onto something else. That makes me sad.”

  She’d rather talk about the aid-in-dying movement, which she plans to continue supporting. “Death is a part of life,” Ziegler said. “They go hand and hand. If we want to have a good life, we should also try to have a good death, however each person defines that. I hope the book inspires people to think about how to live a better life and how to plan for a better death.”

  She’s optimistic that America is ready for the conversation. Fifty years ago, she said, “we couldn’t talk about births. Babies came from storks. Now men have a place in the delivery room. Women have more choices. If we can talk about how we enter this world, we can talk about how we leave it, too.”

• The Cut - https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/brittany-maynards-mother-on-why-she-wrote-her-book.html

  Quoted in Sidelights: I’m very sure of what Brittany asked of me. I’m very peaceful about the memoir. I know my daughter was a very forthright, no candy-coating type of girl. … So, I know that she is proud of me, and that I was going to do what she did, which is to expose your vulnerability in the hope that somewhere, someone will benefit from you being vulnerable.Brittany Maynard’s Mother on Loss, Denial, and Why She Wrote Her Book
  By Lisa Ryan
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  Deborah Ziegler with a picture of Brittany. Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
  Brittany Maynard died on November 1, 2014, on her own terms. The 29-year-old had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor earlier that year. Surrounded by her family, as her favorite poem was being read aloud, Brittany took her own life at her rental house in Oregon.

  She and her family had relocated to Oregon months prior because of the state’s Death With Dignity Act, which allows terminally ill residents to end their lives with lethal medication prescribed by a doctor. In the weeks leading up to her death, Brittany became an outspoken advocate for right-to-die legislation, and a public face of a difficult decision no one would ever want to make.

  Her mother, Deborah Ziegler, has written a memoir, Wild and Precious Life, out October 25, detailing her grief, denial, and life with and without Brittany. Shortly before the book was released, however, Brittany’s widower Dan Diaz claimed there are inaccuracies in Ziegler’s depiction of the last ten months of Brittany’s life. In a statement on Facebook, he also said that in her will, Brittany specifically said that only he could tell her life story, not her mother. Diaz wrote: “Deborah’s book does not speak for Brittany and there are numerous passages that are inaccurate.”

  The Cut chatted with Ziegler about why she wrote the book, losing her daughter, and the imperfect ways people deal with denial.

  On raising Brittany: I was a single mom for much of her youth, so she and I developed a really close relationship. Sometimes it felt like “you and me against the world,” as two females. We even had our little house that we lived in decorated pretty much like a girl house. We had a really close and beautiful relationship. I called her “sweet pea.” And of course, she grew old enough that she wanted to stand on her own and support herself. She broke away, as most teenagers do, and went into a rebellious period. I think that any mom that has had a very, very close and protective relationship with their child probably feels that teen period more profoundly.

  That was a tough period for us, but we found our way through it and took a different route. But in my heart, I just knew it was right for Brittany, and it turned out to be, thank heavens. During that route, she and I were able to reestablish our relationship on a different level, and in a healthy way. She was able to establish her autonomy probably earlier than most young ladies. It turned out to be, for what was going to happen in her life, the ability to establish that will of self was a good thing. It was a hard thing, but it was a good thing.

  On learning of Brittany’s tumor: First of all, I think Brittany was able to withstand quite a bit of pain, and this was something that I tried to convey to her doctors. I said, “If Brittany says she was in pain, then she was in pain,” because she bore the headaches and the symptoms of the brain tumor for many months — really almost a year, if I look back on it. We all were grasping at what could be causing this, and she did see a doctor.

  When I was flying [to Oakland, California, where she was hospitalized], they said there was a shadow on her brain, which is an odd thing to say. It allowed my imagination to wander and softened the blow. They did not have an MRI at the first hospital, so they were going on a different kind of scan that’s not as clear. But I allowed the word shadow to keep me from the knowledge that she might even have a brain tumor. I did not accept that at all as I flew there.

  We were there several days before Brittany, actually, boldly insisted that the doctor not leave the room and that he address her question (“Have you seen my scans? Can you tell me what’s going on?”). Dan, Brittany, [my husband] Gary, and I were all there, and none of us really asked any questions. We were in shock. Brittany is the one that drove the conversation and she was very clear and very specific, and very eyes wide open.

  On denial: The denial phase is a really difficult one to deal with. I wrote so painfully about it; I bared my soul, essentially, about my own inability to move forward, and that period of time that I clung to denial and to hope and wishes and dreams, because our society doesn’t talk about it that much. When it happens to you, you feel that you’re alone. Having read memoirs in the past, I know that when I read someone else’s experience, I have on occasion thought, “Wow, I’m not alone, this has happened to someone else. They felt similarly; they made mistakes, just like I’m making. And wow, I’m reading what they did, and I’m not going to make that mistake.”

  Image
  Ziegler’s memoir.
  It was for those reasons that I bared my soul and said, look how imperfectly I handled this. For the terminally ill, their plan, no matter what it is, is what doctors and families should focus on. The terminally ill, as they speak and share what they want the plan to be — we need to listen, and that is a hard, hard journey. I don’t know any other way to share it then to just show you our imperfect journey.

  On writing the memoir: I’m very sure of what Brittany asked of me. I’m very peaceful about the memoir. I know my daughter was a very forthright, no candy-coating type of girl. She was that way with her doctor and with me as her parent. She didn’t go for that kind of thing. So, I know that she is proud of me, and that I was going to do what she did, which is to expose your vulnerability in the hope that somewhere, someone will benefit from you being vulnerable. So we share that. I feel very at peace and I feel very good about the fact that she said, “Speak up, mama. Even if your voice shakes, even if it’s scary. Speak up for those who can’t.” And that’s a good feeling.

  On Diaz’s claims: I started loving Brittany the first time she moved inside me. That’s 30 years of loving Brittany, talking with Brittany, arguing with Brittany, sharing ideas big and small with Brittany. I think there’s value in those 30 years of knowing someone. I also know what she said to me, personally, and that she never wrote or said anything to me that differed, and so I stand on that. I stand on what I know to be true, in my mother’s heart.

  I don’t want to lash out or reply in any negative way, because I think we each have to grieve in our own way. That’s one lesson I’ve learned about grieving — that we all grieve in different ways. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve.

  On the two years since Brittany’s death: First of all, I learned that it’s okay to feel all the feelings that you feel, and some of them might feel unacceptable or you feel you need to squish them down or ignore them. But for me, allowing myself to feel them all was good. The second thing I learned was that grief usually brings a gift with it, and that we have to look around and see it, and that it might take us a while to lift our head up and see through the tears.

  Brittany left me a gift: In almost everything she wrote and said, she told me to go to Machu Picchu, which frankly sounded to this middle aged woman like a rather odd request. I’m 60, my husband is over 70. I often wondered why she was so adamant about it. But I followed that request and I was rewarded with peace and I was rewarded with a greater understanding and I was rewarded with a new zest for life.

  Now every time I feel a big wave of grief hit me and knock me — they can come for years and years afterwards, and it almost will knock you down to your knees. Sometimes I literally have dropped to my knees. But when I feel that I think, what am I supposed to see? What am I supposed to learn? Usually the answer is: Get off your knees and plan something and go do something, and make the world a better place or have an adventure or go meet someone new or go see how other people live. And that’s the message that I get. But I must say, that didn’t happen to me for about a year. Maybe there are some people who do it faster than me.

Quoted in Sidelights: A graceful and touching gift of love and posthumous devotion from mother to daughter.

Deborah Ziegler: WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Deborah Ziegler WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE Emily Bestler/Atria (Adult Nonfiction) 26.00 11, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5011-2851-6
A mother’s loving tribute to a daughter struggling with terminal brain cancer who desired to die with dignity.“No mother
should bury her child,” writes Ziegler, a former teacher–turned–entrepreneur and public speaker, in this melancholic,
poignant memoir. Though her 29-year-old daughter, Brittany, eventually succumbed to cancer, her death spotlighted the contentious issue of a
terminally ill person’s right to end his or her own life. In 2014, after suffering debilitating headaches, the author’s daughter was
diagnosed with a primary brain tumor and eventually given a murky prognosis. Ziegler’s smooth yet urgent prose is painstakingly
detailed, offering minute particulars of Brittany’s childhood, her own story, and the cancer ordeal itself, treating readers to every nuance
and heart-rending emotion flowing between mother and daughter during this emotionally harrowing twist of fate. “Hope rose in my
chest and fluttered like a wounded bird,” Ziegler writes of her daughter surviving risky neurosurgery, but as the tumor continued to grow
and the pain and seizures edged toward unbearable levels, Brittany kept to her initial resolve to explore assisted end-of-life options in Portland,
Oregon, where a death with dignity law was on the books. This alternatingly heartbreaking and life-affirming book incrementally charts the life of
Ziegler’s “magic carpet girl,” a formerly vibrant, athletic, daring, strikingly lovely woman whom she took on an
Alaskan fjord boat trip as a closing bucket list item. Though her daughter’s final breaths were gloriously free-willed, Ziegler’s
memoir is sad and often difficult to read at times; her daughter’s anger, uncertainty, denial, guilt, and grief become increasingly palpable
as the narrative unfolds. Brittany self-administered a lethal medicinal combination in the fall of 2014 but not before pleading with legislators
countrywide to fully support and adopt laws in their jurisdictions affording terminal patients the right to die on their own terms. In October of that
year her moving YouTube video became a viral sensation.
A graceful and touching gift of love and posthumous devotion from mother to daughter.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
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"Deborah Ziegler: WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463215994&it=r&asid=1400694b80ed7171152b7d00511c824f. Accessed 9 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463215994

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Quoted in Sidelights: Skillfully interspersing stories of Brittany's growing up with a touching account of her final year
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Life's final lessons
Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.
BookPage.
(Nov. 2016): p41.
COPYRIGHT 2016 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
Several recent books, most notably Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, urge us to ask ourselves how we can live a good life, recognizing that death is
a seamless part of our existence. Two compelling new accounts highlight individuals struggling with this question.
In On Living (Riverhead, $24, 224 pages, ISBN 9781594634819), hospice chaplain Kerry Egan begins her vocation with some resistance, unsure
that in her own brokenness she can provide comfort to those who are broken by life and waiting for death. Reluctant to talk about religion with
her patients, she soon discovers that simply listening to their stories--of their families, of their losses and regrets, of love--heals her and them: "I
don't know if listening to other people's stories as they die can make you wise, but I do know that it can heal your soul. I know this because those
stories healed mine."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Egan shares the story of Gloria, a mother who's been withholding a secret from her son and wants to reveal it as a gesture of love in her final
days. A patient named Reggie expresses regret about a life that's been "empty and alone," leaving him without a single friend or family member
to offer comfort. Then there's Cynthia, who struggles to accept her overweight body even as she's dying; like all people who are dying, Egan
observes, Cynthia faces the reality that she will "no longer be able to experience this world in this body, ever again." The lesson for those of us
not dying, of course, is that living fully means embracing our imperfect selves with joy and love while we still can.
Egan's evocative and eloquent book reminds us that we are defined by the stories we tell, and those stories often reveal how life can be "beautiful
and crushing" at the same time.
DEATH WITH DIGNITY
Deborah Ziegler's poignant and fierce Wild and Precious Life (Atria/Emily Bestler, $26, 352 pages, ISBN 9781501128516) celebrates the life of
her daughter, Brittany Maynard, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in 2014 at the age of 29.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
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When Ziegler first learned of her daughter's condition, she ran screaming into the dark night of hopelessness, praying that God would take her and
not her daughter. She refused to accept her daughter's impending death and wanted to pursue any treatment that would extend her life.
Brittany, however, taught her mother the one truth we most often avoid in such situations: A good death is part of a life well lived. After Brittany
learned the gravity of her situation, she moved from California to Oregon, where a death with dignity law allowed her to make her own choices
on how and when her life would end. Her decision prompted a nationwide discussion of assisted suicide and a patient's right to make end-of-life
decisions.
Skillfully interspersing stories of Brittany's growing up with a touching account of her final year, Ziegler reminds us, in Brittany's own words, of
the real lesson we need to learn: "Live your lives well. Accept the sorrow with the joy, the ineffable grief with the love."
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. "Life's final lessons." BookPage, Nov. 2016, p. 41. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469503150&it=r&asid=8b541b0c2b37bb80c99b87e032a65cbb. Accessed 9 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A469503150

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Wild and Precious Life
Candace Smith
Booklist.
113.4 (Oct. 15, 2016): p6.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
* Wild and Precious Life. By Deborah Ziegler. Nov. 2016.352p. Atria/Emily Bustler, $26 (9781501128516). 362.196.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
When 29-year-old Brittany is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, she thinks almost immediately about ending her life with dignity. Her
mother, stepfather, and husband, however, take a while to accept her decision. In this painfully honest memoir, Deborah, Brittany's mother,
records the surgeries, treatments, and soul-searching that went into honoring Brittany's path. She looks back to raising her strong, willful, yet
charismatic child as a single mother, and suffers guilt over memories of spats and misunderstandings, realizing in hindsight that Brittany's often
erratic behavior was early evidence of the tumor. Brittany's family searches for miracle cures and treatments as she says her good-byes and gives
away her possessions, finally supporting her attempts to make the most of her last moments before moving to Oregon, where assisted death is
legal. Her last weeks are stressful, as Brittany's tumor grows, and medicines make her verbally abusive. But the mother-daughter connection
remains strong as they speak out about the importance of the death-with-dignity option. Brittany's story, covered on YouTube, Facebook, news
programs, and in People magazine, will have a ready audience, and Deborah's frank account of their struggles will be comforting to others facing
this difficult decision.--Candace Smith
Smith, Candace
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Smith, Candace. "Wild and Precious Life." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771160&it=r&asid=f9888cf60fe7f74e3d636be917f6e52a. Accessed 9 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468771160

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Quoted in Sidelights: Ziegler gracefully walks the line between eulogizing her child and letting the reader in on … how a brain tumor destroys a
person.
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Wild and Precious Life
Publishers Weekly.
263.39 (Sept. 26, 2016): p81.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Wild and Precious Life
Deborah Ziegler. Atria/Bestler, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-1-5011-2851-6
Ziegler is the mother of Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman who, when diagnosed with brain cancer, chose to take steps toward ending her
own life. Ziegler recounts her and her only child's journey through a terminal diagnosis in this heart-wrenching book. Each chapter deals with
Ziegler's life as a mother: raising her daughter, letting her grow into her own person, enduring the ups and downs of the ever-complicated motherdaughter
relationship, and the illness that changed their family. At the time of her daughter's diagnosis in 2014, only four states had passed "death
with dignity" acts, so Brittany made plans to move from their home state of California to Oregon to end her life on her terms without unnecessary
suffering. Ziegler gracefully walks the line between eulogizing her child and letting the reader in on the ugly side of how a brain tumor destroys a
person. The author shares her grief, struggles with faith, feelings about the American medical system, and her own emotions about her daughter's
choice, all without cynicism or a heavy hand. In the end, she becomes a proponent of a terminal patient's right to choose when to die, and assists
in the battle for legal changes in California. Occasionally Ziegler leans on cliches to deliver her message, but they are not overly distracting, and
sprinkled throughout are websites and important nuggets of information for those faced with similar situations. (Nov.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Wild and Precious Life." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 81+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558256&it=r&asid=638ef243507ac89a329e66dc37c04ea0. Accessed 9 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465558256

"Deborah Ziegler: WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463215994&it=r. Accessed 9 June 2017. Carrigan, Henry L., Jr. "Life's final lessons." BookPage, Nov. 2016, p. 41. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA469503150&it=r. Accessed 9 June 2017. Smith, Candace. "Wild and Precious Life." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771160&it=r. Accessed 9 June 2017. "Wild and Precious Life." Publishers Weekly, 26 Sept. 2016, p. 81+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465558256&it=r. Accessed 9 June 2017

• Seven Ponds
  http://blog.sevenponds.com/lending-insight/book-review-wild-and-precious-life-by-debra-zeigler
  Word count: 774

  Book Review: “Wild and Precious Life” by Deborah Ziegler
  Brittany Maynard's mom shares the story of her life and death
  Posted on January 27, 2017 by Kathleen Clohessy (Blog Writer, SevenPonds)
  cover of "Wild and Precious Life"By now, almost everyone has heard the name Brittany Maynard and knows the story of her tragic death from a brain tumor at the age of 29. Brittany, who moved from California to Oregon to take advantage of that state’s Death with Dignity Law, made national headlines when she spoke to the media about her desire to die on her own terms. When she finally ended her life on Nov. 1, 2014, an entire nation mourned.

  Despite her fame, however, few people knew much about the real Brittany. She shared her story, but the details of her life and death were largely hidden from public view. We saw her as a tragic figure — the “Joan of Arc” of the death with dignity movement in the United States. And in many ways that is exactly who she was. By coming forward, she put a face to the suffering of people who are faced with the prospect of a certain but lingering death. And her video-taped testimony about her decision to end her life — played posthumously in front of the California state legislature — was in large part responsible for the passage of the state’s End of Life Options Act in 2015.

  Now, in “Wild and Precious Life,” Brittany’s mother opens up about her beautiful, intelligent and often-difficult child. We meet Brittany as a little girl — the daughter of a twice-divorced single mother who did everything in her power to give her only child a “perfect” life. And we watch through her mother’s eyes as Brit, as Deborah calls her, grows into a gorgeous young woman whose impulsive nature and independent spirit gradually morph into risk-taking behaviors that drive her mother (and eventually Brittany’s new stepdad, Gary) mad. Years later, Deborah learns that Brittany’s endless thirst for novelty was very likely the result of the tumor that had been growing in her brain for nearly a decade. And she wonders over and over, “Should I have known something was wrong? Was there anything I could have done?”

  Brittany and her mom, author of "Wild and Precious Life"
  Brittany Maynard with her mother, Deborah Ziegler
  (Credit: yahoo news.com)
  “Wild and Precious Life” is not an easy book to read. It’s terribly sad. I cried through most of it. But it is also brutally honest about Brittany’s all-consuming rage and how it intersected, often in terrible ways, with Deborah’s all-consuming grief. Brittany railed constantly against the illness that stole her dreams. Even as she struggled to grab every morsel of joy and beauty from what was left of her life, her anger was a palpable and often horrible force — one that she directed almost exclusively at her mom. And while we understand that — mothers are a safe place to vent our rage — it is still hard to continue reading as Deborah describes the cruelty she endured, cruelty Brittany would almost always forget moments after it occurred.

  In the end, though, “Wild and Precious Life” is a hopeful book. Brittany’s courage and determination helped ensure that hundreds of people living with terminal illness will not have to uproot themselves from their homes at a time when home is where they need to be. She opened the door for a national conversation about dying with dignity, and showed the world what dying on your own terms can be. She withstood a great deal of criticism and never let herself be intimidated by the people who called her decision selfish or morally reprehensible. And she left a legacy of love — one that shines through in a final message she left for her mom:

  Brittany is the subject of Wild and Precious Life
  Credit: dailymail.co.uk
  To my dearest mother —

  “There is no road map to heal from the loss of a child, but you should trust your instincts. No matter how powerful and painful the heartbreak, that breaking is opening up a door to a new life. One that is not better, but different and not necessarily worse, just changed because of this pain. I know your strength because I have seen it. I have felt it. It has changed my life. It will carry you on to more greatness in life….That is who you are.

  All my love always,
  Your Daughter, Brittany

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