Sunday, July 2, 2017

Book Review: Polio and Me by Ken Dalton













Polio and Me
By Ken Dalton
Genre: Personal memoir {discovery of polio vaccine}

The year is 1943. A five year old boy wakes up. He cannot stand or hold an apple in his hand. The boy is rushed to his family doctor, diagnosed with polio, and taken from his mother’s arms to the contagion ward at the county hospital. 

Thus begins his eleven year journey of surgeries, rehabilitation, and therapy so that one day, he can walk, unaided, across a stage and receive his high school diploma.
While the boy struggles through his childhood, and in spite decades of research, polio epidemics continue to paralyze and kill hundreds of thousands of adults and children well into the late 1950’s. 

Polio and Me provides the heartbreaking story of polio’s devastating past, the struggle to overcome present, and promising future. 

My Review

Ken Dalton has written a nonfiction book that combines his personal experience with having polio as a child, his family history, as well as a ton of information about polio. I learned a lot about the treatment children had to endure who were diagnosed with polio, the oppression of the disabled, and how laws changed over time for inclusion and protection. 

I appreciate the honesty and memories that Ken shared in this book. As a mother, I can't imagine any of my children going through something this frightening, and I am grateful for the science to keep them as healthy as possible. This is a wonderful read for those who enjoy memoirs, history, and medical nonfiction stories. I give this 5 stars.

About the Author

Ken Dalton was born in Los Angeles in 1938. In 1943 he contracted polio and spent the next eleven years of his childhood in and out of hospitals.

He is married to his childhood sweetheart and is a father of three, a grandfather of four, and great-grandfather of nine.

After a successful thirty-eight year management career with Pacific Telephone Company, Ken retired to write golf and travel articles for Golf Digest, Golf Illustrated, Fairways and Greens, and Golf.com. During two NBC-TV Celebrity Golf Tournaments at Lake Tahoe, he interviewed Olympic Decathlon Champion, Bruce Jenner when he was Bruce, not Caitlyn, the mischievous Chicago Bears quarterback, Jim McMahon, the iconic Vice-President Dan Quail, and NBC Today show anchor, Matt Lauer.

Ken designed, built, and operated a 2000 case winery named Pommeraie Vineyards where he produced award winning Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay.

He has published six mystery novels, The Bloody Birthright, The Big Showstopper, Death is a Cabernet, The Tartan Shroud, Brother Can You Spare A Dime, and The Unsavory Critic.
Ken’s memoir, Polio and Me, marks his initial foray into the world of non-fiction.
Presently, Ken is working on his seventh Pinky and Bear mystery, The Heretic’s Hymnal.




1 comment:

Ken Dalton said...

Thank you, Sage for your wonderful review.
As a mother, you will protect your children from harm. But if something did happen, then I am sure you, as did my mother, would rise to the occasion and do what you had to do to help your child recover.
Ken Dalton

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