Rise: How a House Built a Family
Written and Narrated By: Cara Brookins
Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
Altho’ I felt bouts of rage at times, I do so love this book!
First the rage:
Rise opens with a scene of abuse that Cara Brookins suffers, and I got all peeved because she casts herself as a bit of a martyr in that she thinks she’s taking all the abuse and is keeping her kids out of the loop… Are you freakin’ kidding me? Like her kids aren’t suffering too? I mean, what the hell?!? She says she’ll keep it to herself, even as she acknowledges that her current husband has the entire family walking on eggshells.
Then too, she casts her children as fellow Prisoners of War, as though they’re all equals, and she’s not the woman who gave birth to fellow sufferers. Her kids are a mess; they’re frightened beyond belief. TOTALLY ticked me off: You’re the Mom, for heaven’s sake: Keep them safe!
But that’s where her choices stop, and the REAL story begins: We see the horror show that both she and her children have had to survive. It’s the story of a loving man brought to the brink over and over by schizophrenia, by paranoia and not taking his meds. He turns their lives into hell, and there’s extreme mental abuse, torture really, and even animal cruelty as he does whatever his mental illness tells him he has to do to “keep his family safe”.
Which is where the story of Cara and her kids choosing to build their own house with their own hands turns into a fantastic voyage. The kids learn to dream, to trust in their mother, to trust in themselves, even as the building does NOT go according to plan. But they keep plugging away, learning new skills, rebuilding themselves even as they put the walls up, even as they learn about plumbing and such.
I liked how Cara really brings her kids to life as individuals with problems, with endearing traits. And I liked how, as the story progressed, she becomes a stronger and more honest individual herself—she starts opening the lines of communication, letting her children be open about the hell they experienced, taking care of them, even as she herself is frightened beyond belief.
As a narrator of her own work, Brookins sometimes falters: at times, her delivery is a bit robotic and subdued, but at least she knows where she wants to kick it up a notch. I’m glad she chose to tell her story.
Rise is a truly grand story! It’ll stick with you for a long, long, LONG time. Loved it and HIGHLY recommend it!
As it’s said in the end: What do you mean, you CAN’T? You built your own house, for crying out loud!!
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