Spared

by Shaun Deane

Three weeks before Shaun Deane was scheduled to graduate from college, just before his final exams, a series of unspeakably tragic events began to unfold in his life. These events influenced Shaun's life from that day forward, as he tried to make sense of a time when the world was upended. While moving his parents out of their home, decades later, new details surfaced enabling him to see the entire arc of this complex story.

Spared tracks the story that began in 1977, a story that cut a swath through all the ensuing decades. It honors what we cannot control and celebrates the times when we are able to reject that which would pull us down. It is a tale of survival, death, fathers, sons, and husbands and wives, told with earth-shattering clarity.

232 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2018

About the author

Shaun Deane was born in Boston, Massachusetts, graduated from Newton North High School, and from Brandeis University, Cum Laude and earned an M.A. from the University of San Francisco in Educational Technology.

He has worked as a dishwasher, taxicab driver and dispatcher, meat market and pharmaceutical narcotics delivery driver, teacher, production editor and product manager. He was Apple Computer's first ever Video Evangelist. He has been a member of the Executive Management teams at two Bay Area startup companies. He was also President and Founder of American Sports Events, hosting endurance sporting events throughout New England.

Spared is his first (but not last) published manuscript. The book percolated for many years and then, got a jump start at the Colgate Writer's Conference, in 2009. He lives with his wife Patricia and lowrider, Riley in Brattleboro, Vermont. His son Travis is a Navy diver, stationed in San Diego and his daughter Gretchen is an Equestrian, based in Vermont.

Reviews

[Sharon Huether · Rating 4 out of 5]

From a fractured family, Shaun turned to friends and street life. His mother didn't want him to fret.
When his brother Chris took his life, it was like he was in a unreal world...A nightmare.

Shaun has shared his most personal moments in his book.
I won this Free book from Goodreads First Reads.

[Stuart Liftig · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating memoir of life and whether our fate is due to nature or nurture

This book fascinated me. I had briefly met Shaun over a weekend in August and by chance, discovered that he had just published this book earlier in the summer. Other reviews were favorable and I needed a good read, so I downloaded it to the kindle, not sure of what to expect.

His power of description and narrative made the story very real - photo realism in writing if you will. I became a hitchhiker observing his life’s journey. I felt like a voyeur at first and gradually realized that everyone’s life journey has common elements. There are many detours, false starts and ruts in the road. The characters and level of drama may differ, but everyone’s life consists of a series of plateaus separated by canyons.

In the face of tragedy he plods on, running the marathon, gradually finding the path and gradually finding out why the rest of his family lost their way.

The pace is excellent. I never felt a need to put the book away. I hope you will enjoy this as much as I did.

[Marilyn Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible story, beautifully told, right up to the very end.

[Pam Sloss · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was hard to put down. The reader gets a very descriptive narrative of the author's life. Very interesting twists and turns with lot of adventures for the reader to follow.

[Bri Percha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book more than I did. Shaun is an intelligent writer, and much of the book was beautifully written. I very much appreciate the sharing of his very personal story. However, while I was immediately drawn in and connected to the story, it very quickly become disjointed and I had a hard time following the sequence, characters, and occurences in his life. Many of the descriptions of the emotions he was facing were more wordy than necessary (though beautifully written) and/or overly metaphoric and I found myself disconnected from the experience he was conveying. This saddness me because I so wanted to really connect to this personal story being shared.

[Amileigh Gordon]

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