Review: The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever

The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever

By Alison Johnson

Published by Cumberland Press

ISBN: 0967561922

191 Pages

Received a review copy from Newman Communications, Inc.

 

 

Product Description (from the back of the book): Two tons of silver and gold coins, hundreds of thousands of nickels, dimes, quarters, and gold pieces. They were under our beds, in the kitchen cupboards, up in the attics, in the bottom of dresser drawers, in holes in the ground. My father was obsessed with gathering up these coins and hiding them away in any likely spot in the houses and garages and store buildings he owned in our tiny town on the mid-Western prairie. Nothing could shake his belief that the total collapse of the American economy and government was just around the corner, a collapse that would bring anarchy and rioting in the streets.

With this shadow of Armageddon always hanging over him, Dad believed that he could save his family from disaster only by collecting as much gold and silver as he could lay his hands on.

This fear of a future calamity that might leave his family penniless so dominated Dad’s thoughts that he failed to see how his blind absorption in amassing wealth created family problems that would lead to his oldest son’s hopeless alcoholism and his wife’s mental collapse. My sister grew up so insecure that she eventually turned to the stars for answers to the frustrations of her life, immersing herself in the study of astrology. In the fairy tale, King Midas’s daughter was miraculously restored to life after she had been turned to stone by her father’s desire for gold, but Dad’s destructive influence on his family could not be so easily reversed.

The General Review: The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever is a brutally honest, first-hand account of how hoarding money can ruin a family. Written from the authors perspective, Alison Johnson tells a heart-breaking story of the long-lasting effects an addiction can have on loved ones.

Likes: I appreciated the author's honest and candid perspective of her fathers gold and silver addiction and how his hoarding had a huge and detrimental impact on each person in her family. While the story the author told is sad and unfortunate, I thought that Alison Johnson shared her account in a bold, straight-forward way that would appeal to most readers.

Dislikes: There was nothing about this book I disliked.

Closing Comments: I originally chose to receive this book to review because I thought the subject matter was unique. I recommend The Eleventh Hour Can’t Last Forever to anyone who is a fan of memoirs or has a fascination with hoarding.