After a hard fall from a tall horse landed the author in a body cast for three months, she didn't take it as a sign to ease back on the throttle. Instead she changed careers, went to law school, became a criminal prosecutor, and bought her first set of spike heels.
5 stars!
This book kept me well occupied throughout an otherwise very boring 9 hour road trip. It's a collection of essays, on various topics. Some funny, many uplifting, and a couple that will ruin your eye makeup. I found it inspiring that the author was able to go through so much heartache, and come out better on the other side. And I don't intend to be glib, this is an excellent read. Several of the sections really struck me, from struggling with outgrowing dated expectations of femininity while wielding a chainsaw, to losing a parent, something I did at age 20. Just a fantastic, fantastic collection of musings, and I returned home from the trip ready to get my hands on more of her books.
I really enjoyed Wagner's direct no-nonsense attitude, as well as her willingness to be vulnerable, to really put it all out there. Her honesty is refreshing, and it drew me in.
5-STARS!! When the Shoe Fits: Essays of Love, Life and Second Chances is a collection of inspirational essays written by Mary T. Wagner. Wagner’s life as wife, mother, journalist and life-long companion to two horses took a slight detour when she decided to go back to school and study law at the age of forty. Then she took a closer look at her life and filed for divorce. But it all started with a jump her horseback riding instructor had wanted her to try once again. She ignored the still small voice inside her and gamely tried once more, ending up on her back and in a world of pain. Wagner had actually broken her back and would spend three months in a body cast. It gave her time to think about life, her priorities and the dreams she was not quite ready to put on a shelf and forget about. The essays in this collection chronicle her new life, complete with adult children who were not at all surprised when their parents decided to split up.
Many essays are bittersweet and pull at the heartstrings, particularly those concerning Wagner’s parents. I loved her essay, Return to the Fatherland, which describes a trip Wagner took with her teenage sons and her ailing father, a reunion with his family after several decades away. Wagner marvels at how frail he had become and how he’d go off somewhere in his head from time to time and then return. Her essays about her horses also speak of the passage of time and loss in a most poignant way.
The essays I liked best were those in which she shared her outdoor adventures, starting with Thelma and Louise on Spring Break. It was grand fun to follow the two friends as they escaped the bitter cold and snow and followed the sun’s southern trajectory until they reached the Gulf Coast and found their paradise. It was a beach with “white sugar sand,” that was warm and perfect as she lazed on the shore and dug her fingertips into the sun-baked warmth. Likewise, her descriptions of the vacation cabin and her birding adventures are marvelous. Wagner is a gifted nature writer; those skills showing even as she describes the transformation of her yard into a place of life and flowers.
Then there are the funny ones: the descriptions of a year of dating and her conversion to motorcycling as an expression of trust and love, and the year she discovered that her adult children had indeed inherited her sense of humor when she found the Christmas Axe cookies complete with bloody edges and the Angel cookies with bloodstained hands when cleaning up after a glorious traditional Christmas meal and gift exchange. Each essay is brilliant and beautifully written, with a style that is conversational and relaxed, making you feel the author is speaking directly to you. When the Shoe Fits: Essays of Love, Life and Second Chances is most highly recommended.
When the Shoe Fits by Mary T. Wagner is a highly recommended collection of 38 essays that range from the author's love of drop-dead gorgeous stilettos to buying her first chain saw. Wagner manages to bring together in these essays the wide range of experiences, optimism, evolutions, loves, and emotions that, let's say a "maturing" woman will relate to and appreciate.
Many of the essays reinforce [that] every day is a gift. Remember what’s important. Don’t take the people in your life, or even those who just cross your path, for granted. We learn these things as we get older, and inevitably we wish we’d learned them sooner...Through this book, she gives readers access to a mind filled with hard-earned and practical wisdom, and one that can find beauty in the simple, the routine, and the heartbreaking events in life.
"When the Shoe Fits” speaks on the inner workings of a sometimes giddy, sometimes thoughtful, and sometimes brutally honest mind.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I literally read my way through childhood! I was not an outgoing little girl, and so I spent a lot of time in my room with my nose in a book–horses, mythology, Nancy Drew mysteries, regency romances. I didn’t think of writing as a talent or a profession until I stumbled into a journalism degree in college, and then I was hooked. Over the years, there’s been a progression to what I write. First it was newspaper style where you just report the facts using very simple sentences. Then the magazine writing allowed me to use more description and a more convoluted sentence structure, and even let a little opinion or perspective come through. When I finally started blogging, I was writing just for myself and not to please an editor or an audience, and it felt quite liberating! It’s a little like opening Pandora’s Box at times–I’m more even sure what’s lurking around in the recesses of my mind until I start writing it down, leaving room for more to burble to the top and get discovered.
An interview with STITCHES THROUGH TIME...
As a woman whose philosophy is “Buy the shoes, the outfit will come” I love the titles of your books, especially your most recent When the Shoe Fits. How did you come up with the titles?
By serendipity, which is how just about everything good in my life happens. I never even bought my first pair of spike heels until I was…let’s just say on the far side of forty. I had been a newspaper journalist and then took up freelance writing when I was a soccer mom. After my fourth child was born, I survived a terrible accident, and then I changed directions completely and went to law school. I thought that my writing days were behind me…but then a friend I worked with and her husband who was a stay-home dad and a blogger convinced me to start writing a blog. We started brainstorming, and all of a sudden, "Running with Stilettos" was at the top of the list! The shoe theme flowed from that…
One of the drawbacks of not having a big publishing house behind you is that you have to do your own author photos and cover designs. Mary T. Wagner shares how her cover shoot elevated the “do-it-yourself” experience to the realm of high comedy.
