Fear Itself

The third of Candida Lawrence's stand-alone memoirs, Fear Itself rises from her life-long awareness of human fragility. A survivor in the truest sense and a woman with the greatest personal resilience, Candida Lawrence recalls what it is to make each day an assertion of independence. Her deeply felt remembrances always grants us an honest account of what it is to live in this unstable world. And Fear Itself is no exception.Fear Itself begins with Lawrence's childhood distrust of the men who make things.” And through its twists and turns, it marks her growing awareness of modernity itself. With a voice that is richly revealing, Lawrence traces her years struggling to have a child and her slow waking to the secrets that governments and institutions withheld from the women of her generation.Unwittingly exposed to low-level radiation in the 1940s, Lawrence learned somehow to believe herself into wholeness and to survive her disappointments until there was nothing left to fear-but fear, itself. As always, Lawrence's writing is filled with smart, gentle anger, sweet sadness, and the most private sense of what is vital and important.To read this memoir is to know a remarkable woman.