Review: Halfway to Each Other

I tend to not like many nonfiction books. I like a story. I like fiction. In Halfway to Each Other, I didn’t get fiction, but I did get an amazing story. In fact, Susan Pohlman wrote it in a style that actually could have also been a first person fiction book. This made it a very enjoyable book for me.

Halfway to Each Other is the story of Susan and her husband (Tim)’s attempt to salvage their marriage. Some of us try sitting down and talking when we are at odds with our significant others. Some try marriage counseling. Susan and Tim had a completely different approach. They left everything they knew (their entire lives) behind and moved themselves and their children to Italy for a year – a place where they didn’t know the customs or the language – where they only had each other to turn to – where they were forced to communicate. Where they moved in Italy, technology was not anywhere like what they had here in America – not only did Tim and Susan begin turning to each other, but their two children stopped the constant arguing and also started playing and entertaining each other.

That kind of moved proved to be stressful – there were moments when I wasn’t sure if the move was going to save the family or tear them apart even more. However, they did make it. This “disconnection to reconnect” worked for them in amazing ways.

Divorce has become so common – the idea of working on a marriage foreign to so many that it was enlightening to read about a man and woman who would go to such extremes to save their marriage, and knowing this book was true made it that much more impressive.

About Susan Pohlman
Susan is an educator and freelance writer. She and her family now live in Scottsdale, Arizona. Halfway to Each Other is her first book.