Dare to Dream
by Marie Perna

Available at Amazon for $11.66 (See link below)

Reviewed by DeanOP
MSWorld Book Reviewer

So many of us with multiple sclerosis have written autobiographic pieces. Some have written books. Others have worked with poetry or essay-length formats. A great number of these works fall short of the universality necessary to capture and hold my attention. They are, in the main, lists of symptoms, emotional responses to those symptoms and attempts to triumph over, or learn to live with, those symptoms. Often the author is so self-involved that this reader is really left out rather than invited in to the author’s world.

Marie Perna’s book is a delightful exception to those I’ve just described. What distinguishes Mrs. Perna’s work is her focus on others in her life—on experiences other than her own, and her ability to paint rich and entertaining pictures with words so that the reader is given something to latch onto besides the author’s struggles with disease. Perna’s tremendous zest for living is another attractive feature of her book. She isn’t simply mouthing the positive-thinking mantra, she is truly a positive person.

This brings up one more feature common to the majority of autobiographic works I’ve read by those with MS. There is an awful lot of self-congratulatory writing out there. People depict themselves as battling and winning. It’s always along the lines of I didn’t think I could do it but I did!

There’s nothing wrong with that sort of writing but, unless I know you (or want to know you) personally, your ability to take a hike or ride a bike simply can’t matter to me. Mrs. Perna’s book contains its own measure of self-congratulation. But the writing is so enthused and so unselfconscious that I found myself cheering her on rather than wishing she’d just keep quiet about it.

Marie Perna writes directly to the reader in a very confiding way. It’s as if you had her there in your home, happily chattering with you, advising you, offering you her experience, strength and hope. Toward the end of her book she even writes, with charming insouciance, about writing the very book you’re reading which sort of wraps the whole package neatly up.

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