Title: Getting Up Close and Personal
Author: Dee Williams
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 978-1-4691-8091-5
Genre: Autobiography / Christian Faith
Pages: 46
Reviewed by: Beth Adams

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I remember a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” If you can’t fly, then run, if you can’t run, then walk, if you can’t walk, then crawl, but by all means keep moving.” In a way this sums up how author Dee Williams continued moving through life amidst many setbacks, trials and tribulations as she calls them, in her revealing autobiographical book titled Getting Up Close and Personal. Yet in her book she constantly and continuously resorted to prayer, praise for Him and readings of the Bible to help her find the inner strength she needed to move on.

Separated into chapters consistent with her own life’s chapters of growing up, Dee Williams writes in a very “in your-face” honesty telling of the hardships she endured. Yes, as she ingeniously admitted near the end of her book, she uses the work “I” way too often – something which seemed obvious to me as a critic while paging the book. Nevertheless, she does explain why she wrote it in so often as being important to showing readers what God has done for her throughout her life, which is the theme of her book.

Sometimes it is better for an author to write a book for his or her own self-healing, of which this book manifests many of these qualities. She does orbit into the teachings of the Bible, the Christian life lessons, and her prayers to God as being the core of her strength, as times when much of the nuances of her life seemed to be misguided and lost.

She has overcome physical abuse as well as verbal abuse, failed marriages when attrition set in, and pain from arthritis; yet in the end she gained her wisdom granted by having lived through all of this, and is honestly wishing to tell her story to others in the way of support and guidance. Her praising of the Lord is, as she claims, her light which snatched her from darkness and thrusted her into His light. As she closes with the sentence, “God is sovereign, immutable, majestic, eternal, everlasting, almighty, wonderful, excellent, and omnipotent! His is first in my life!”

I believe Getting Up Close and Personal, due to its short volume, would be good for the author to read at self-help sessions of Bible study groups, or used as a tool to begin the thought process for others to close the book and begin their own interpretation of how it relates to each of the readers’ lives. In any event, we wish the author congratulations on achieving the place in her life to reflect back on these difficult times and topics, and readers will also enjoy her praises to the Lord.