Each day leading up to the April 16 announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, and in collaboration with community editors from the award-winning Saint Paul Almanac, we highlight one of the thirty-two finalists. Today we feature 2016 Memoir & Creative Fiction Finalist:
We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying by Bruce H. Kramer with Cathy Wurzer
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
Category Sponsors: Kevin and Greta Warren
When educator and musician Bruce H. Kramer received a diagnosis of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), he faced the harsh hand that life had dealt him as he had always faced life: he framed his experiences as a path toward learning and growth. Knowing ALS to be incurable and progressive, he recorded his reflections and life lessons, chronicling with warmth, wisdom, humanity and humor the changes his disease brought to him and to his family. Each day became an opportunity for growth and renewal as he sought to live well and write with his terminal illness. More than a memoir, this book takes its readers on a meaningful journey of learning, love, loss, and fulfillment. We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying draws on a blog Bruce created about his life with ASL called The Dis Ease Diary as well as conversations he’d had with Cathy Wurzer on Minnesota Public Radio’s Morning Edition.
Written with wisdom, genuine humor, and down-to-earth observations, We Know How This Ends is far more than a memoir. It is a dignified, courageous, and unflinching look at how acceptance of loss and inevitable death can lead us all to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.
Author Bios:
Long-time educator Bruce H. Kramer held the position of Dean of the College of Education, Leadership and Counseling at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 2008 until the autumn of 2012. He was also a professor in the Department of Leadership, Policy and Administration at St. Thomas. Prior to leadership roles in higher education, Bruce was a high school principal in Bangkok, Thailand; Cairo, Egypt; and Stavanger, Norway. Dr. Kramer’s was also a musician. He held a Master’s in Vocal Performance from Ball State University in Indiana. In March 2014, Bruce died of complications related to ALS.
Cathy Wurzer’s career spans both commercial and public radio and TV. She is a multiple Emmy Award winning journalist and also the co-host of the longest running public affairs television show of its kind in the country: “Almanac” on Twin Cities Public Television. Prior to this role, Cathy was a news anchor and reporter at the WCCO-TV and was also an announcer on WCCO Radio. She is a documentary filmmaker and author of an award winning book about the sites and secrets along U.S Highway 61.
Cathy Wurzer is on Facebook and Twitter.
An Excerpt from We Know How This Ends:
“There is disease and dis ease. Disease is loss by design, with whole industries devoted to cures as if such a thing were possible. Dis ease gives us a choice. We can awaken and pay attention to the entire narrative, or we can deny and pretend unawareness. We can be seduced by the siren song, or we can lash ourselves to the mast and hold on for dear life. No matter the choice we make, dis ease remains—my informant, my teacher, my mentor, my constant companion.
“And my awakening is a masthead from which I will live and die.”
Reviews:
“Security and immortality are both superstitions; the best we can do is make an adventure of our lives. In this exquisite book, Bruce H. Kramer finds adventure in the most unlikely of places: the death sentence that is ALS. We Know How This Ends is a moving tale that teaches us more about living well than any self-help book ever can.”—Dan Buettner, New York Times bestselling author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest
“As Bruce’s yoga teacher, student, and friend, I have witnessed the story behind this magnificent tale of becoming. I have watched his strength, his grace, and his willingness to love. Bruce’s prose is courageous and penetrating, elegant and unprecedented. This book will change your life.”—Matthew Sanford, author of the Minnesota Book Award-winning Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence
“Bruce H. Kramer turns his diamond-hard diagnosis like a prism, reflecting light and joy in surprising places. We need to hear this story now. The honesty and clarity of Kramer and Cathy Wurzer invite us to consider how we live in the face of impending death or unwanted change.”—Susan Allen Toth, author of No Saints around Here: A Caregiver’s Days
“Poetic and practical in embracing the inevitable.”—MinnPost
“We Know How This Ends is a hopeful book. And a serious, joyful, literate, nuanced, bracing and funny book.”—The Huffington Post
“This is an important book about how the promise of death changes the dying and those who remain to live for awhile. Dual narratives of loss confront compassionately and matter-of-factly fraying relationships, insensitive doctors, spiritual belief while insisting that death, suffering, and dis-ease, as Kramer calls it, are part of the experience, and the gift, of living.”—Minnesota Book Awards Preliminary Round Judge
Listen:
NPR Podcasts – Bruce Kramer and Cathy Wurzer’s series on MPR: Insights on life from a man facing death.
“On Being with Krista Tippett”: A conversation with Bruce Kramer – Forgiving the Body: Life with ALS
Watch:
SELCO librarian Jennifer Harveland reviews We Know How This Ends: Living While Dying.
Join the conversation on Facebook.
The evening features a Preface Reception with complimentary passed wine and cash bar, author meet-and-greet, book sales and signing; the Awards Ceremony with live music, celebrity presenters, artisan cheese plates and breads, complimentary wine and lemonade, with emcee Stephanie Curtis of MPR; and the Epilogue After-Party with complimentary champagne, sumptuous desserts, and additional live music. Tickets now on sale, or click here for more information.
Today’s winner: Marisa Patrin. (We’ll be in touch via email, and arrange getting the book to you!)
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