Friends and colleagues have offered early praise for “Noe”:
Franz Wisner, author of Honeymoon with My Brother and How the World Makes Love:
“There is no doubt Phil Wolfson’s poignant and thoughtful Noe will break your heart. There is also no question Noe will strengthen your heart, as well as deepen your sensitivity and widen your range of emotions. A seasoned psychiatrist, Wolfson shares, through unbroken honesty and thoughtful prose, the toughest story a parent could tell. Yet out of the depths of his family’s tragedy, Wolfson enriches our emotional knowledge, better equipping us for the blows, large and small, sure to befall us all.”
Jerry Jampolsky, MD, founder of The Center for Attitudinal Healing and author of Love Is Letting Go of Fear:
“A sensitive chronicle of the vagaries of love and the struggle to stay clear and present despite great stress and difficulty. Noe can serve as a guide to those who are living through overwhelming personal crises, facing their own or a beloved’s death. It charts the possibilities for coming apart, staying together, and the choices that will have to be made during and after a great illness. A terrific book for fathers building a new culture of connection with their children.”
Lew Carlino, director and screenwriter of Resurrection and The Great Santini:
“Phil Wolfson has beautifully written a loving threnody to his son, Noah, who died young, much too young, of cancer. The work takes us deep into the sorrow and courage that lies in the most tender and vulnerable recesses of the human heart, until, finally, we are there, with Noah, walking alongside him on his via dolorosa. And we come to understand that we are walking with Wolfson and his family as well and, ultimately, with each other, sharing the grief that life brings us, and that the music of this book, this healing paean, is helping us along our way.”
Ralph Metzner, PhD, author of The Well of Remembrance and The Unfolding Self:
“My friend Phil Wolfson and I belong to that sorrowful fellowship of parents whose children have died. In this book of great courage, he shares the harrowing journey of his family as they endure the four-year ordeal of their teenage son succumbing to leukemia. Blending Noah’s rueful journal notes as he anticipates his life’s ending with Phil’s tender descriptions of an exuberant youthful life amidst the terrible despair of the helpless parents—this story is a heart-opening testament to the power of the spirit of love.”
Sasha and Ann Shulgin, authors of Pihkal and Tihkal:
“We lived this story with the Wolfson family and knew intimately of their pain, struggle, and loss, and their simultaneous commitment to love and sanity. They were courageous in their use of alternative methods to explore and heal mind and heart, and that story is told in Noe as an offering to others to take risks to find new truths. Noah’s death is still a terrible loss to all of us—he was an exceptional young man. Noe reveals him to you in hopes of helping you on your own life’s bittersweet path.”
Judy Norsigian, co-author of Our Bodies, Ourselves:
“This extraordinary memoir and moving story about losing a child to leukemia offers many provocative insights about how we raise our children, deal with death, and create the communities that support us in times of crisis.”
