Transforming Helen

In Transforming Helen we meet a fifty-year-old woman who investigates cases involving children in her volunteer role as a  Court Appointed Special Advocate. She also plays a major role in the Claudius Foundation, started as she reentered life in middle age. The foundation provides housing for people struggling to raise children in otherwise substandard conditions. Helen's dual roles in advocacy work for the court and leading the foundation fill her life.  They also allow her to avoid dealing with issues from her past that she cannot bear to face. 

We gradually learn more about Helen and the missing years of her life. A murky past lived on the East Coast involves close contact with powerful people and unusual experiences.   Now in Seattle Helen slowly reengages with life, forced in part by Alicia, a widowed neighbor with a peculiar issue of her own. As Helen builds a new life she is confronted with the crises of those she helps and also those crises residing in her personal history.  As we travel the path of Helen's daily life we snatch glimpses of the lives of many others -- those who have great resources as well as those who have little more than two small orphaned nephews and a broken-down car. We meet an intriguing inventor and run-away teen parents devoted to a newborn.

Encouraged and compelled in turn by those around her Helen attempts to balance her desire for a spiritual life without emotional entanglements with her responsibilities in the world of action. We observe cycles of retreat and engagement as she moves toward a life of integration and unity. In her struggles and triumphs Helen impacts those around her, transforming her own life as she transforms the lives of others. 

Transforming Helen is filled with people and their stories -- a book of emotional depth, uplifting and heartbreaking by turns.  

Dettagli