He Plays a Harp

by Roberta F. King

He Plays a Harp - a memoir by Roberta King chronicles the short life and death of Noah as told through his mother's point of view. Readers will experience the unimaginable, challenging and frustrating circumstances of raising a child with a severe and life-threatening disability. But make no mistake; this isn't a book about a child who has died. It is about a child who has lived. He Plays a Harp is a story about how an everyday family, living under extraordinary circumstances, refused to let their son live anything less than a normal life. While the author's grief and loss are undeniable, her matter-of-fact writing style, sharp sense of humor and fierce love for her child will have readers laughing through their tears at tales of mischief and hilarity that all loving families experience.

264 pages, Paperback

First published May 11, 2014

About the author

Roberta F. King lives in Muskegon and is the Vice President of PR & Marketing at Grand Rapids Community Foundation. Outside of her professional public relations writing, her articles and essays have been published in Atticus Review, Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers, The Boiler, Hippocampus, Lifelines (the literary journal of The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College) and in The Rapidian. He Plays a Harp is her first book.

Reviews

[Juanita · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy of He Plays a Harp arrived on Friday, May 2. I finished it on Sunday.

I had the advantage of knowing some of the story having read some of the excerpts which had appeared as essays in literary journals over the previous few years.

Picking up a book that you know is going to be sad can be a daunting task. Yes, I cried. But oh, did I laugh as well. Both emotions made reading He Plays a Harp worthwhile.

He Plays a Harp is a love story and details a mother's love for her son, who will forever be 17. Roberta King's son Noah Miesch died after a battle with pneumonia in 2006. The book opens with that hardest of story to tell as Roberta and her husband Mike say goodbye to their son.

The memoir is set up as a series of stories. Not necessarily a chronological telling of a boy's life but rather the remembrances of what made Noah the unique and loving boy he was. Early in his life Noah was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Roberta shares the intimate details of caring for a child dependent on his parents for the routine activities that we take for granted. But she also shares his adventurous and mischievous nature. Stories of exploration and friendship are woven between the sections detailing his death and her life after Noah's death.

I'll remember many of the stories for a long time to come.

[Sondra Burnham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary life of this child and family. They pull together in times of need and relinquish when time calls for same. I found the book thoroughly full of pleasure and happiness all combined with grief and sadness. Roberta wrote a powerful story. I'm honored to have read it. Honored to share the book with others.

[Julie Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

That book will stay with you for a while. A very good read.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sweet and heartbreaking and uplifting.

[Linda Sienkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Roberta King's brutally honest and tender memoir begins with the death of her son, Noah, at age 17, and then reflects on his life starting with his birth. What I most appreciate is the reflective quality of this memoir. She writes about means to parent a child with cerebral palsy as she also imagines what life is like from her son's point of view. One of the highlights for me was when Noah got into trouble for deliberately pulling a fire alarm in school. To Roberta, it represented a moment of complete independence - he had broken away from what she calls his "limited naughtiness." It was a milestone of sorts, and as she took him to the fire station (per the school's request) for a lecture by the fire chief, she admits she was proud of Noah for acting out on his own.

As she details the minutia of the daily care of a disabled child, Roberta also writes about the silly jokes and special moments she shared with her son. Their relationship was certainly more complex than a typical mother and son's would be, but it was also remarkably rich and nuanced, much more so than I ever would have imagined. For this I thank Roberta for sharing her story.