Carolyn Walker

Carolyn Walker began her creative nonfiction writing career as a columnist for The Clarkston News, her small town newspaper, where she learned the importance of writing about "every day people". Every day people, she believes, contain the world's best secrets. She has grown from there to become an award winning writer of memoir, essays, and poetry. Carolyn's writing has been published in several literary journals, such as The Southern Review and Crazyhorse, as well as numerous magazines and newspapers. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also a Kresge Fellow in the Literary Arts. Every Least Sparrow is her story of raising a daughter with a rare disability, called Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome.

5 Star Review By Divine Zape for Readers’ Favorite

Every Least Sparrow by Carolyn Walker is a memoir that every mother should read. As a mother, I have always believed that every child is special, that is, every child comes with a blessing and a curse, and that the curse is the part of the child that brings out the motherhood in us. This memoir has taught me many lessons. Carolyn Walker finds out that her new-born baby girl has a rare syndrome, the Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome — and I am, like the mother, learning about it only in this book — a condition that affects her mental and physical abilities negatively, or so everyone thinks. One could imagine her anxiety, the worry that suddenly takes hold of her heart. This book chronicles her journey with her daughter and her desperate search for a cure. It is wonderful to read how she meets with professionals, travels from one part of the country to another, searching for what is buried inside her heart. She discovered patient love as she needed to find the best time to engage with her daughter, accompany her as she learned skills late, like using the toilet. What this journey did to Jennifer is as wonderful as the transformation happening in the heart of her mother.

Carolyn Walker’s memoir is really heartwarming and there is no better way of describing her journey than using the term “awakening.” Her experience of living with her daughter and tending to her family has provoked a spiritual growth in her. Readers will love Jennifer and watching her as she evolves in the story. Every Least Sparrow had a lot to teach me and one of the wonderful lessons that caught my attention is this: No matter the depth of our pain, of our frustration and worry, it becomes less when we allow love to take hold of our heart. Jennifer found solace and a wonderful place to grow in the love of her parents. One can’t read this memoir without giggling happily at times, feeling tears run down their face, or occasionally being seized by a wave of powerful emotions. It was such an inspiration. A beautiful story simply told and a powerful message of love and hope, with lessons for everyone.

Some beautiful words from a Canadian reader:

I met Clarkston, Michigan writer, Carolyn Walker, at the Vermont Studio Center, a divine artists’ colony. Both of us mothers and writers, we were working on memoirs of our special-needs children, who are radically different from each other. Carolyn’s daughter, Jennifer, the subject of Every Least Sparrow, has a rare and exquisitely complex condition called Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome involving severe physical and mental disabilities. My adopted son is physically “normal” and not “retarded,” the word Carolyn uses. Instead, he has an exquisitely complex neuro-psych profile and concurrent disorders that express in self-sabotage and antisocial behaviour.

Given these wildly different profiles, you might think Carolyn and I wouldn’t have much in common. In fact, we belong (to) the same sisterhood: fiercely loving mothers with children whose extraordinary needs swallow us whole. We walk over hot coals to give our kids a fighting chance. It is precisely this connection between us that will endear her excellent book to every parent raising a very different child, no matter the diagnoses.

That said, this memoir is especially meaningful to parents of children with rare syndromes, who rarely see their journey reflected in literature. The shock of realizing something is terribly wrong. The agonizing struggle to figure out what it is. The hospital’s revolving door. The specialists’ shuffle. Poor Jennifer, now an adult, has had more doctor visits and risky surgeries than you can count. And she has endured them with dignity.

As well, the book is a valuable resource for doctors and specialists intimately involved with these kids and their families. In Jennifer’s case, some of the medical professionals who treat her, earn high praise. Others, not so much.

Every Least Sparrow achieves something far beyond the disability story at its core. It brings an individual to life. We meet Jennifer as a person, much more than the aggregate of her peculiar looks with beak nose, sloping eyes and jointless thumbs. We see Jennifer obsessing about the movie, Titanic, and Celine Dion’s theme song. In the chapter entitled Lovebird, she plays the flirt with a couple of boyfriends. Indeed, these intensely bittersweet pages had me laughing and crying.

Carolyn’s gifts as a writer, and her devotion as a mother, is guaranteed to do the same for you.