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Rating: 
Summary: The Triumph of Love Over Experience
Review: A touching and sincere book but one comes away thinking---if these two people could and do work so hard with their very decent ex-spouses to make a blended family function why couldn't they have made the original marriages work in the first place? Seems it would have avoided a tremendous amount of pain and disruption for the children they purport to put in first place. And conversely if a marriage is so bad as to leave no other choice but divorce, the likelihood of of bringing angry, embittered or even violent ex-spouses into a successful blended family seems slight indeed.
Rating:
Summary: affirming, appealing - and limited
Review: I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to stepfamilies since 1981. I am (a) a stepfamily researcher since 1979, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, ex-stepfather, and stepbrother, and (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America.
I recommend this book to women who (a) seek a glimpse one couple's courtship and re/wedding experiences, and/or who (b) want to validate their own experiences as women, wives, and (step)Moms.
I do not recommend this book for students or other readers who seek to understand and avoid or resolve specific stepfamily problems - specially those looking for practical guidance on how to evaluate and prepare for stepfamily re/marriage.
I suspect typical readers will close the book feeling warm and perhaps hopeful and inspired. They will have enjoyed a detailed, true-color travelog to part of one woman's story, and glimpses some respectable re/marital experts along the way. Readers will *not* have clear outlines of the five hazards that face typical US stepfamilies:
1) co-parents' psychological wounds;
2) blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to reduce it;
3) adult unawareness of five key topics: (a) human personality formation and function, (b) high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities and norms.
4) needy, love-struck unaware partners choosing the wrong people to re/wed, for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time; and
5) little effective stepfamily help available in most communities and the media.
For more perspective on this review, see:
http://sfhelp.org/11/choose_bks.htm
Rating:
Summary: affirming, appealing - and limited
Review: I have studied divorced-family and stepfamily relationships professionally since 1979, and have provided over 17,000 hours of education and therapy to well over 1,000 divorcing, courting, and re/married co-parents (stepparents and bioparents) since 1981. I've studied and taught effective communication skills for over 35 years, and worked to recover from childhood trauma and neglect for 17 years. I've been re/married (and a stepfather of two girls) and re/divorced, been an adult stepson and stepbrother, serve on the Board of the Stepfamily Association of America by invitation, and have written six books on family relationships -including three on stepfamily courtship, re/marriage, and co-parental teamwork. The "/" notes that it may be one partner's first union. Women and selected men considering or in a stepfamily will find great affirmation and validation in Wendy Swallow's skillful, intriguing account of her own post-divorce remarriage involving prior kids. Her well-crafted story touches on many of the common experiences step-adults and kids find as they begin to merge and form this ancient, normal, confusing type of family. Though Swallow skillfully weaves experts' and lay people's quotes into her saga, this book is essentially the honest, readable story of her and her second husband's courtship and remarriage. The book makes no pretense of being a how-to or "re/marital-success handbook," and has no table of contents, recommended resources, or index. I suspect typical readers will close the book feeling warm and perhaps hopeful and inspired. They will have enjoyed a detailed, true-color travelog to part of one woman's story, and glimpses some respectable re/marital experts along the way. Readers will *not* have clear outlines of the five hazards that face typical US stepfamilies, and practical options for identifying and resolving the 11 core problems these hazards usually generate. From this view, her book is more entertaining than explicitly useful. Having spent 25 years studying her book's topics - including reading over 50 other books in the genre and hundreds of lay and clinical articles, I own some strong biases in rendering that respectful opinion. I do recommend this book to women who (a) seek a glimpse one couple's courtship and re/wedding experiences, and/or who (b) want to validate their own experiences as women, wives, and (step)Moms. I do not recommend this book for students or other readers who seek to understand and avoid or resolve specific stepfamily problems - specially those looking for practical guidance on how to evaluate and prepare for stepfamily re/marriage. For perspective on these recommendations, please visit the non-profit educational "Stepfamily inFormation" Web site at http://sfhelp.org. My book on Ms. Swallow's topic is based on 25 years' stepfamily research and clinical and personal experience: "Stepfamily Courtship - Make Three Right Re/marriage Choices." (http://xlibris.com/stepfamilycourtship.html)
Rating: 
Summary: Like a long conversation over coffee in the kitchen...
Review: I read Wendy Swallow's memoir "The Triumph of Love Over Experience" for many reasons, nonetheleast of which was because they (Wendy and Charlie) own the farm on which my fiance and I live. From the vantage point of the barn up the hill, I get to observe their blended family in action. Another reason was my engagement to a man with a child from a previous marriage who's twenty-year attempt at blending a stepfamily was an abysmal failure. Also, I have many stepmothers and blended families in my little world - my fiance's own immediate family notwithstanding. Then, too, my own family was a strained amalgamation of a stepchild, a natural child of the union of these two previously-wed adults, and an adopted child (me!). Obviously, this memoir was a must read.
Wendy's writing style is as comfortable as a long conversation in the great dining room of the farmhouse. There's humour - at situations and (most importantly) herself. There's compassion. There are the endless questions of what's best for this children - both his and hers - as well as what's best for the two adults of primary concern. Wendy and Charlie. I learned so much about the extrapolation of families and connectedness and dysfunction from reading the results of Wendy's research. All made sense. I also learned about myself, recognising many similar traits and reactions while reading about her efforts and experiences.
As she and I discussed just the other night, while my fiance and I didn't blend children (as I've never been a wife, let alone a mother), we did blend animals and that, in some respects, is more challenging. I was able to see many similarities in how Wendy and Charlie worked to establish a sense of family amongst their four teenage boys and how my fiance and I blended dogs we'd each had for years and years (mine having been an "only child" all her life), and horses when one of mine wasn't really keen on men handling him and none of his had ever been under any female's jurisdiction. I realise most people don't see pets in the same light as humans, but there are more similarities than differences when dealing with animals and children. Wendy's book helped confirm some things we'd tried, and suggested new methods for areas still of concern.
Overall, I'm thrilled to have read it, and have to pass it on now to my fiance (who was reading over my shoulder on the flight to Phoenix last week). He's already said he wants his son to read it, given their collective experiences during that second marriage. I'm also honoured to know Wendy Swallow personally, and find both her writing and her self comforting and inspiring.
Rating: 
Summary: smart, helpful and honest
Review: The book is limited to one woman's specific experience, but Swallow writes really well and makes clear how many pitfalls await those who hope to remarry, especially those with kids. As a fellow midlife journalist divorcee, even with no kids, engaged to a divorce without kids, much of her story still rang true for me. I found many of her insights, experiences and ambivalence about remarrying compelling and sobering. She's candid about how strong she felt surviving her divorce and the identity she created as a single mother supporting her two sons, and how she really enjoyed it, even with its difficulties. She talks honestly about her ambivalence of taking on a whole new family and its culture and history, as well as grieving the loss of her reclaimed independence. There are no rosy-colored visions here, but a terrific, funny, honest story of one woman, two families and the many mixed feelings involved in going back into married life. I highly recommend it, and have already told several remarried, engaged and divorced friends it's worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Found Great Comfort in Swallow's story
Review: Wendy Swallow found a graceful way to say so eloquently all the pain, confusion, hesitancy, expectancy, delight, torment and eternal hope that those of us who have sadly left one marriage feel as we enter into another. Following on the heels of her first book, Breaking Apart, this new work completes the circle of loss, grief, and triumph in relationship. Swallow made me laugh and cry at the same time. A must read for all who have suffered the loss of a marriage and nuclear family to divorce -- and for those who are moving into new relationships or just growing into a new version of their life.
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