Looks Easy Enough: A Joyful Memoir of Overcoming Disease, Divorce, and Disaster

In this didactic memoir, Stevenson reflects on his personal and psychological growth while dealing with his wife's struggle with breast cancer, his sister-in-law's tumultuous divorce from an abusive husband, his losses in the recent stock market crash, and the destruction of his home in a wildfire. The tone of the book is reminiscent of Tom Youngholm's The Celestial Bar%E2%80%94a staple of New Age spirituality literature by an author whose influence Stevenson readily acknowledges. However, Stevenson's narrative is hardly a journey of discovery. In the book's introductory note, the author tells readers exactly what "Truth" means to him: having a perspective on the "Magic" of life, or "knowing that we choose our experiences to learn and to grow from so we can all move towards and experience the Oneness of all things." Despite Stevenson's obvious sincerity, the crises he encounters inevitably end as opportunities to tell his wife and sister-in-law%E2%80%94as well as the reader%E2%80%94about the "Magic," unintentionally producing a memoir that proves to be more of a self-congratulatory slog than a self-revelatory journey.