Ten Minutes from Home: A Memoir

By Beth Greenfield

Ten Minutes from Home is the poignant account of how a suburban New Jersey family struggles to come together after being shattered by tragedy.
 
In this searing, sparely written, and surprisingly wry memoir, Beth Greenfield shares what happens in 1982 when, as a twelve-year-old, she survives a drunk-driving accident that kills her younger brother Adam and best friend Kristin. As the benign concerns of adolescence are re­placed by crushing guilt and grief, Beth searches for hope and support in some likely and not-so-likely places (General Hospital, a kindly rabbi, the bottom of a keg), eventually discovering that while life is fragile, love doesn’t have to be.
 
Ten Minutes from Home exquisitely captures both the heartache of lost innocence and the solace of strength and survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307462077

Reviews for Ten Minutes from Home

[txwildflower_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The story of a trauma in the life of a twelve year old girl in which her little brother and her best friend are killed in an auto accident. Ms. Greenfield says on the back cover she still experiences guilt, blame, anger, and regret and this is what they whole book is about....her feelings in the years following the accident. However, she fails to say what her life is like today, 25 years later. Every member of a family deals with a tragedy like this one differently but the author seems to want to blame everyone else, especially her parents for not being there for her.

[dablackwood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very sad and moving book. Beth Greenfield writes of the car accident that killed her younger brother Adam and her best friend Kristen. She was 12 at the time of the wreck which seriously injured her father and in which her foot was broken. The accident was caused by a drunk driver. I wish Ms. Greenfield had let us know what happened with the driver of the car that caused the wreck. I also wish she had described in more detail her college years and the years up to the present. This book is her attempt to heal from the wreck and its aftermath. I hope it is helpful for her.Hard to say that you enjoy a book like this - it was difficult to read. But it was well written and told an important story.

[lg4154 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a great book that I was fortunate enough to win an advanced reader copy thru Read It Foreword. I liked it a lot and love the author's writing style. It was a deeply personal story that the author experienced thirty years ago, losing her adopted brother in an automobile accident and losing her best friend, Kristen. In the process she suffered a broken leg and to go thru her own grief and the grief of why was I spared. You can definitely tell that she is a writer and tells the story as if the reader is actually there, experiencing her pain and loss. I really enjoyed this book, it was a little bit depressing however, but a great read anyways. I also love some of the song references and some of the descriptions of things from my childhood that I almost forgotten.

[toobusyreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ten minutes from home, coming back from twelve-year old Beth's ballet recital, the family car was hit by a drunk driver. Beth's little brother and only sibling, Adam, and her best friend, Kristen, did not survive. This memoir, written 25 years later, is a heartfelt, touching memoir of grief, of coping and not coping, of the guilt of survival. Beth did not know how to deal with all she was feeling, and her parents, lost in their own fogs, were not able to help. She especially needed her mother and was angry and embarrassed when her mother couldn't be the rock she wanted. Friends didn't know how to react, how to express themselves. Beth felt both alienated from them and craved the extra attention she got.If there was any mention of what happened to the driver who hit them, I somehow missed it, and I am curious about that.Nicely written, this memoir is an emotional read but did not strike me as maudlin. It is an adult remembering the emotions of a child and it rings true as what a child would feel, not what an adult would imagine a child would feel. The copy I read was an uncorrected proof and had a few, not too many, mistakes that I assume are corrected in the published edition. One quote I found heartbreaking in the unintentional cruelty it spoke:“After he was gone, my great aunt Mildred said, ' At least he was only adopted,' and my mom never forgave her.”Ten Minutes from Home is a lovely little book that will touch anyone who has ever felt loss.