This is a book about joy, strength, and triumph in the most unlikely circumstances. It tells us how families and individuals coped with and conquered such seemingly insurmountable challenges as widowhood, adoption, assimilation, terminal illness, retardation, and paralysis. These are stories of people helping one another. Of finding new reservoirs of love, new wellsprings of strength, new treasures of faith. Sadness? Not in this book. Call it a book of discovery - that's what it is. This is a book about people who learned how to relish every moment of life, how to cherish every shred of health, how to infuse every moment of existence with the refreshing faith that "everything is good" and every challenge is an opportunity for growth. The heroes and heroines of this book are even greater because they undertook the difficult task of opening windows into their lives to enrich the rest of us with the stories of how they coped and overcame. Thanks to such courage we share the turmoil of a young Russian immigrant who is pulled apart by his dilemma over whether to become an "American" or a "Jew", the pain of a young mother as she valiantly makes her way through the first stages of widowhood and the overwhelming pride of parents whose handicapped son achieves acceptance in a well-known yeshivah, on his own merits. This is a book about winners. It is for people who want to conquer all kinds of adversity; for people who want to share the vision of the victim turned victor. It says, In King David's words. "Behold, He neither slumbers nor sleeps, the Guardian of Israel." The person who realizes that, has seen beyond the Vistas of Challenge.
by Seryl Sander