Reviews of First Love Last

In First Love Last, Helen Bonner has it right -- she has it right about love, about commitment, about loss and about redemption -- the redemption of loss through enduring love.  The story rings true because it  is true.  There is no slight-of-hand here, no embellishment, no manipulation of fact for effect.  There is a love story, as simple and as complicated as life itself.  Reading it made me feel better, stronger.  Yes, I thought: this is possible for those of us who have grown older --  fearlessness, forgiveness, new capacity for risk and joy.   I'm glad Bonner wrote this book and I am glad to have read it.  

Susan Carol Hauser is the winner of the 2010 McKnightAward  for Poetry and author of Girl to  woman,  Full Moon: reflections on Turning fifty,  and Outside after Dark: New and Selected Poems.   www.susancarolhauser.com

Helen Bonner's First Love Last begins as a chance encounter with her first husband at a high school reunion.  They had divorced decades earlier and had not kept in touch, nor had he made any attempt to see his two sons.  Her story reinforces the notion that our first love makes a lasting impression on our brains.  Her honest, no-holds-barred telling of the passionate rekindling of a love relationship thought to be long dead is intriguing and inspirational, especially since the lovers are in their 70s. Her long-absent first husband undergoes chemotherapy, blood transfusions and experimental treatments and lives with the knowledge that his time on earth to make amends is short.  First Love Last is a story about unbreakable bonds, loving beyond appearances, forgiveness and hope.
             -- Nanci Woody

 First Love Last is more than a good story about an unforgettable love.  This book will transform the ways both the old and young underestimate the power of love.
            -- Antoinette May, author of Pilate's Wife and The Sacred Well

Dr.Bonner's book touched my soul at its spiritual core as it kept me spellbound. Many thanks for this literary wonder.
           -- Lynette Monroe, BSN, RN, CCM, Sacramento