Title: A Needed Life, a memoir about an extraordinary relationship

Author:  Craig Modahl

Genre: Memoir

Pages:  198

Publisher: Craig Modahl, 2023

Reviewer: Leoma Retan

I recommended A Needed Life, to my book club yesterday, something I don’t often do. My only cause for hesitation was that this particular book club focuses on memoirs and A Needed Life isn’t an ordinary memoir. But then again, Kevin wasn’t an ordinary man. Nor is the author, Craig Modahl.

An extraordinary relationship began when Craig and his wife brought twenty-nine-year-old Kevin, a severely developmentally disabled man who had been all but discarded by the system that should have protected him, into their home, lives, and hearts. Told in alternating vignettes from a five-day canoe trip and incidents in their daily lives, Craig shares his family’s twenty-four years with Kevin, from dark moments of worry to the pinnacles of joy. Filled with humor, frustration, compassion, and most of all, love, I believe Craig titled Kevin’s story A Needed Life because the kind of resilience and exuberance Kevin exhibited each day has the power to change the lives of everyone around him for the better.

At the end of the book, Craig reflects on his view of what a utopian afterlife would look like. He says, “Kevin would appear as himself, as I would appear as myself. We would both have all of our earthly quirks and struggles, our eccentricities, our talents, or gifts and our gaffs. We would be who we are here, now. The difference would be that we would be wholly and fully accepted, appreciated, welcomed, and loved without condition.”

Something to think about when we encounter those who are different in this life, and decide how we will behave and what we will say to them.

Reviewer Bio: Leoma Retan is a retired engineer, avid writer, and proud techno-freak. Born in Wisconsin, she’s lived in seven states and two non-US countries. A member of the Wisconsin Writers Association, she builds worlds in her dreams and relaxes by exploring past, present, and future possibilities through the visions of others.