Heart of Iron

December 5, 2011
Garlett (The Worst Call Ever) takes a break from sports writing to tell his own valiant story of survival. After four bouts with cancer, years of radiation and chemotherapy, and a treacherous five-year wait for a heart donor, Garlett shocked the world by competing in two breathtaking Iron Man Triathlon World Championships. This tale of heartbreak opens a window on the life of an 18-year-old boy who suffered numerous medical traumas until he was 35. Garlett's story is insightful and inspiring, although at times the details become too much. For those who seek an inspirational story, the technical words and meticulous re-enactments add potentially unnecessary hurdles. However, a hero in every sense of the word, Garlett's unwavering courage, raw honesty and brilliant love for life absolutely radiate from the page.

September 1, 2011

Freelance sportswriter and motivational speaker Garlett (What Were They Thinking?: The Brainless Blunders that Changed Sports History, 2009, etc.) writes with humor and brutal honesty about his 17-year battle to defeat cancer.

In 1989, Garlett was expecting his senior year in high school to be a ball; when he noticed two lumps in his neck, he wasn't unduly alarmed. A biopsy revealed Hodgkin's lymphoma, but the doctor reassured him that it could be cured. He finished the school year and went on to college, functioning despite the debilitating effects of radiation treatment, but his first year in college was a disaster. He spent his time partying and barely squeaked by academically. Then the Hodgkin's returned and this time he faced six cycles of disabling chemotherapy. After another remission, he buckled down in college and established a career as a sportswriter after graduation. His remission lasted only until 1995; this time, his odds of surviving were reduced to 40 percent. His treatment was so severe that he was on the point of death several times and required a bone-marrow transplant. After finally defeating the Hodgkin's, two years later he faced leukemia and three more years of treatment. Describing his experiences with wry humor, he chronicles how he managed to keep working, met and married his wife and worked to rebuild his strength. Not content to define himself with just being a survivor, he welcomed new challenges. After recovering from a heart transplant (necessitated by the effects of chemotherapy), he competed in the grueling Ironman Triathlon.

A compassionate celebration of the human spirit that doesn't gloss over tough realities.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2011
It takes a special person to recover from debilitating life blows, but simple recovery wasn't enough for Garlett (The Worst Call Ever, 2007), who has been diagnosed with cancer four times and underwent a heart transplant in 2006. He refused to give up competitive athletics, even after the transplant, and in September 2007, he and his wife competed in their first official triathlon. That led the way to his training for the Ironman competition (a kind of super triathlon) in Hawaii, which he eventually completed an amazing two times. In this memoir, Garlett, a freelance sportswriter, covers not only his athletic accomplishments but also the painstaking details of his medical ordeals, from diagnosis to surgeries to medication to recovery to living as a man with someone else's heart. From a young age, Garlett's health complications caused unimaginable trauma to his joints, ligaments, and bones, and yet he managed to take on one of the greatest challenges in all of sports, requiring strength, endurance, and heart. Clearly, Garlett has a boatload of all three. A truly inspiring story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)