Review: Zig-Zagging

Book: Zig-Zagging by Tom Wilson
Pages: 211
Finished: October 2010
Challenges:
***A-Z challenge ***Memorable Memoirs**Fall Into Reading 2010

From Amazon

In this inspirational memoir, Wilson, author of the cartoon strip Ziggy (a job he inherited from his father), relates a life filled with wondrous memories and profound struggles. While growing up, Ziggy served as a means for father and son to draw out our thoughts and feelings about each other. But years later, Wilson's leg was crushed in a car accident, his wife died at age 44 of breast cancer, leaving Wilson with their two sons, and his father—both mentor and hero to Wilson—also had a serious illness. Immobilized by depression, Wilson's faith failed him, and he concluded that the mercy of God [was] an apparent fiction. Wilson struggled for peace and truth with Ziggy by his side. His ultimate rescuer was the gift of a journal in which he recorded his feelings and thoughts. With ideas like imagining Moses as the first Superman, Wilson delights with fresh, well-considered insights, while the Ziggy cartoons reproduced here put both the character and his creator in a moving light.

My Thoughts:

First of all, I must say that during my teenage years and early 20's I loved the Ziggy cartoon. My husband, while we were dating, would send me Ziggy cards when I was away at college. I so enjoyed receiving them and sending my own to him. Ziggy is the loser who becomes a winner--the little every man that lives in all of us.

This was a well written memoir by a man who felt like he had lost his whole world, and then found a way to climb out of the pit of grief and grief induced depression. His writing style incorporates the analogy of driving home from a business trip and that of life's journey. I was rooting for Mr. Wilson to find his faith in God again--because his life was filled with hope even when he couldn't see it or feel it. A true testament to the heartache and joys of real life.