Praise for the Book

Professor Cromer Learns to Read has touched the lives and hearts of many readers from different walks of life. Read on to learn more about what reviewers and readers are saying.

Janet Cromer captures so elegantly and emotionally the roller coaster ride of experiencing a brain injury. I found myself eager to turn every page, cheering on the little accomplishments and grieving the very complicated loss and grief that accompanies this devastating life change. Cromer takes us beyond the injury and into the recovery, which, while painstaking, never fails to help us understand the beauty and grace of little things, and to cherish what we do have.

Lee Woodruff, Co-author of In an Instant: A Family’s Journey of Love and Healing, and author of Perfectly Imperfect

With daring honesty, compassion, and intense love, Janet Cromer has given many readers a gift. Professor Cromer Learns to Read will serve anyone interested in the difficult journey of recovery after an acquired brain injury, understanding the huge commitment required of a family member in this recovery, and navigating and overcoming our healthcare and human service delivery system. The book provides the details of what it takes to undertake the awesome roles of survivor and caregiver.

Marilyn Price Spivak, Co-founder, Brain Injury Association of America

Professor Cromer Learns to Read is an intellectual and emotional roadmap for anyone who has, is currently, or may in the future navigate the swampy waters of caregiving for a loved one with serious disability. It is the compelling story of love and struggle in the midst of illness, of strength and frailty of the human spirit looking straight into the eyes of the beast. A starkly honest and forthcoming account of the ups and downs of their lives following the transformation of Janet’s husband by brain injury after a cardiac arrest. Extremely well-written, I could not put it down.

Mel Glenn, MD, Director of Outpatient and Community Rehabilitation, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School

Professor Cromer Learns to Read illustrates ongoing re-invention, re-prioritization, and survival of relationships and of the self. We all share the responsibility and the desire to provide and receive life-long support with which to live lives of dignity as Alan and Janet’s “Odyssey” teaches us in this book.

Therese O’Neil-Pirozzi, ScD, CCC-SLP, Associate Professor, Director of SLP Graduate Program, Northeastern University

Cromer takes us on an unprecedented love story. Cromer, both a poetic and plain spoken writer, offers tough honesty. She opens the door to her marriage and lets us in every room. She reveals her furious experience with authenticity, openness, and a page-turning craft. This book grabs and holds tight until the final page.

Randy Susan Meyers, Author of The Murderer’s Daughters. Read the full review at the Huffington Post

Professor Cromer is an unflinching look at the continual physical, psychological, spiritual, and emotional adjustments Janet and Alan made during his post-heart attack years to salvage, savor, and even deepen their love

Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, read the full review on his blog.

This is a book that works on two levels: for the professional caregiver and the spousal caregiver. For the former, it cannot but help to increase the empathy for, and admiration of the family caregiver, supporting their loved one. As for the latter, as a former spousal caregiver, her descriptions of her ambivalent emotions, joys, and travails ring absolutely true.

Richard Anderson, Board and Executive Committee; Immediate Past President, Well Spouse Association

The opening chapters are as riveting as a Michael Creighton thriller. I couldn’t put this book down as I experienced the unfolding medical drama through the eyes of Alan’s wife- a nurse and gifted writer. The book will be helpful for a broad range of readers- family, friends, and caregivers of people with brain injuries or strokes as well as veterans returning from combat with traumatic brain injuries. Professionals in health care and public health will also find it informative.

Geoffrey W. Wilkinson, public health professional

During the seven years of Alan Cromer’s entry into the worlds of brain injury, dementia, and Parkinson’s disease, his wife, an experienced psychiatric nurse, is there to observe and report. She also observes the changes in herself as she adjusts to life as a caregiver in a new kind of marriage. “The original Alan was not coming back,” so how to survive? Janet Cromer answers this question for herself and offers her strategies to others in her situation in this extensive examination of one wellspouse’s life.

Maggie Strong, Founder of the Well Spouse Association; Author of Mainstay: For the Well Spouse of the Chronically Ill

I was made aware of how small the window is that we on the professional side of the couch get to see in families. Janet’s book opened that window wide and the narrative was the more powerful for that.

David Bullis, Ph.D, Neuropsychologist

Love, suffer, cope, transform. Janet makes this arc surprisingly inspiring and, at times, even funny. I would strongly recommend this book to couples on the brink of marriage as a spinning-out of love enduring even as one member of the couple has morphed into a new way of being and the other has found ways to wrap herself around it.

Mopsy Strange-Kennedy, Psychotherapist and Teacher

Professor Cromer Learns to Read has many stories of trials and triumphs, from Alan’s lengthy stay in intensive care to his time in a rehabilitation hospital to his ultimate return home. It is a story, not only of survival, but of the strength of love.

Brooke Kenny, Book reviewer, The Gazette Newspaper Montgomery County, MD. Read the full review.

I’m happy to announce that Professor Cromer Learns to Read was reviewed and annotated in the New York University School of Medicine’s Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. The Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database is a “resource for teaching and research in MEDICAL HUMANITIES, and for use in health/pre-health, graduate and undergraduate liberal arts and social science settings.” You can read the annotation here.