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“Beautifully rendered – honest and raw…

[Laesa’s] writing will bring you to tears and fill you with hope.” - Hilary Yancey

A child born too early, clinging to life. Her heart is incorrectly formed. Her airway is compromised. She is unable to swallow or breathe.

A mother losing, finding and remaking herself, again and again.

A family who refuses to give up.

Can’t Breathe is a young mom’s compelling recollection of her medically complex daughter’s journey toward life. Evelyn Faith survives—she even thrives. But her path is unimaginably hard, riddled with pain and trauma, hope and miracles, and incessant uncertainty.

This beautifully written, harrowing book captures the nuances of life with a special-needs child. It is a map of the boundlessness of the human spirit and the love that drives parents onward whatever the cost. In this debut memoir, Laesa Kim reaches into her darkest and most private depths to share the truth—the struggles and joys she and mothers like her face each day.

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In her poignant memoir Can''t Breathe, Laesa Faith Kim takes the reader through oceans of pain and tragedy smattered with streams of joy. This beautifully articulate story invites the reader to examine how personal devastation has the ability to strengthen or destroy - to build up or tear down... Shattered hope spreads like sunshine through these pages.

- Canadian Authors Association

Her writing style and voice are familiar, on the spot storytelling, somewhat journal-like...Part of the allure of this story is the immediacy with which the author writes. Her fear and anxiety are palpable. She speaks breathlessly, offering, one syllable at a time, the unfolding of events...an honest, well-written memoir.

- Susan Oakey-Baker; author of Finding Jim


Can''t Breathe moves from the every day to the reflective in language and expression...the books direct approach benefits the writer and the reader.

- JJ Lee; author of The Measure of a Man


Beautifully rendered - honest and raw...[Laesa''s] writing will bring you to tears and fill you with hope.

- Hilary Yancey; author of Forgiving God


One of the most powerful, and insightful, books I''ve read. I can''t recommend Laesa Kim''s book enough. Difficult subject, but wrtiten with enormous sensitivity and courage.

- Mark L. Winston; Award Winning author of Bee Time


It is a true gift when an author conjures the right words to describe the indescribable. It''s an even bigger gift, when they use those words to pull you right up next to them where you can feel with them. Laesa Kim''s Can''t Breathe brings life into high definition. Her story prompted a visceral response to squeeze a little tighter, slow down a little faster and ultimately, breathe a little deeper.

- Megan Williams; Award Winning author of An Interrupted Fairy Tale


Laesa Faith Kim''s Can''t Breathe is as much a journey of her daughters fight to life as it is a journey of Laesa''s own. Can''t Breathe explores this transition period through tests of faith, family and medicine as a women gives up everything she has known of the life she pictured and takes on everything she can hold to help her daughter fight to breathe.

- Leilani Graham; Standford Medicine ePatient Faculty & Heart Transplant Recipient

More reviews on goodreads.

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