His Bright Light, Danielle Steel
His Bright Light, Danielle Steel
19 Rating(s)
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His Bright Light

Author: Danielle Steel

Narrator: Traci Godfrey

Unabridged: 9 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/05/2000


Synopsis

At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel’s tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing, and understanding to us all.

“This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold, and a tortured soul. It is the story of an illness, a fight to live, and a race against death.

I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it. I want Nick's life to be not only a tender memory for us, but a gift to others. . . . I would like to offer people hope and the realities we lived with. I want to make a difference. My hope is that someone will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it.”—Danielle Steel

From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful, personal story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories and Nick's remarkable journals, Steel brings us a haunting duet between a singular young man and the mother who loved him—and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression, which afflicts between two and three million Americans.

About Danielle Steel

Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel was born on August 14, 1947 in New York. Her father was a descendant of the Lowenbrau beer family and her mother was the daughter of a diplomat. She studied both literature and fashion design, first attending the Parsons School of Design and then New York University, graduating in 1967. Danielle Steel is currently the bestselling author alive today, and the fourth bestselling author of all time with over 650 million copies of her books sold. Steel has written 129 books, 93 of which were novels, primarily romance. Every one of her novels has achieved best seller status. She has been published in 69 countries and in 43 different languages. She has had 22 of her novels adapted for television movies and two of those received Golden Globe nominations. Danielle releases three new novels a year and works on multiple books at a time, often as many as five at once.

Steel has been married five times and although she is currently divorced, she is a strong believer in marriage and family. An only child, she discovered the joys of a big family as a child through one of her friends. She has nine children (seven biological and two stepsons that she has always considered her own) that are her greatest accomplishment. Her joy in life is her children and she speaks of them frequently on her website and her blog. Many of her books have been dedicated to one or more of her children. She was based in California for most of her career and now lives in both San Francisco and Paris.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Diane on September 20, 2017

Great Read! a memoir on the struggles that her family suffered because of mental illness and then finally tragedy at the end..well written (paperback!)......more

Goodreads review by Carol on April 28, 2020

I was so astonished by this true story. I knew that Danielle Steel could tell a good story, and I knew that a true story of how she lost one of her children would be incredibly wrenching and tragic. But I never would have believed an author who writes so often about wealthy, jet-set type people woul......more

Goodreads review by Randye on March 24, 2011

This is my favorite Danielle Steel book. Yes, it is partly because I share her experience of parenting a child with mental illness (though Nick had childhood-onset bipolar disorder and my Ben has schizophrenia which began to appear gradually in his mid-teens) - but, this common thread aside, I could......more

Goodreads review by Luckngrace on October 02, 2011

I read this book because of my own bipolar daughter. She's also been suicidal several times, but she'll soon die anyway from hepatitis C or liver cancer. You see, bipolars don't want to take their meds but, since their body needs the meds, they're drawn to cocaine or pain pills or heroin. I say hep......more

Goodreads review by Gina on January 15, 2011

Having a child with Bipolar disorder and suffering from it myself I can only say that Danielle Steel is not only and amazing writer in my opinion but a damn good mother! To have lived through the trials and tribulations of Nick's precious short life, to fight to help him win and only lose him in the......more


Quotes

"A powerful and personal story....His bright light is Danielle Steel's legacy and tribute to her son, as well as haunting depiction of manic-depression."—Saturday Evening Post

"Danielle Steel has written a spellbinding account of her son 's struggle with bipolar illness....Valuable insights....We come away with a heightened sensitivity that perhaps only a writer of this distinction could convey, of what it is like to try to cope with a child with a severe psychiatric disorder....This is a book about what we can do—as parents, as physicians, as human beings."—Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

"Reading His Bright Light moved me to tears as the memoir captures so vividly the ferocious nature of mental illness....Sharing [Nick's] story will save lives. His Bright Light will make a difference for countless others."—Laurie Flynn, Executive Director, NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill)

"[A] searing portrayal of the loss of her 19-year-old son . . . Ms. Steel's heartfelt homage to her son may very well help others save a life."—Dallas Morning News


The Nick Traina Foundation has been established to benefit mental health, music, child-related causes, and other charitable organizations for assorted causes, and other charitable organization for assorted causes. All of the author's proceeds and agent's fees from this book will go to the foundation, which will also receive direct proceeds from the publisher for all copies sold.