Naming the Scars, by Marty Silverthorne

Naming the Scars by Marty Silverthorne is a powerful and disturbing book. “Disturbing” is the right word. If you are not disturbed, you haven’t read it. Silverthorne’s direct and forceful words, and his unrelentingly honest images, force us into a world that we would not know without his poems, a world both horrifying and blessed, horrifying because of the continuing illness, the quadriplegia the narrator must face, and blessed because of the extraordinary caregivers whose portraits Silverthorne paints so vividly, caregivers and family members who become healers. This book will stay with me for a long time. -Tony Abbott, author of The Angel Dialogues