BETTING ON BERNIE: A Memoir of a Marriage is that rare kind of memoir that knows how to tug on the heartstrings while avoiding the saccharine sentimentalism of the airport bookshelf. Martha Marks’s account of her half-century of marriage to her late husband Bernie is affectionate, moving, and beautifully written.

Marks is an effortless writer. Her voice is assured and compelling, and she understands—as so many memoirists do not—that few peoples’ lives are so uniformly interesting that they can withstand blow-by-blow scrutiny. Marks wisely slows down the narrative for the moments that defined the couple’s journey together, and speeds up for the less-noteworthy ones.

As such, the first third or so of the book is devoted to the couple’s courtship, which began in 1965 and culminated in their marriage three years later. Much is made of the point that she and Bernie made for unlikely life partners. She was an eighteen-year-old college-educated Methodist from the Deep South; he was a Jewish New Yorker with no education, and was eight years her senior to boot. But the pair hit it off, and at length Bernie won over Martha’s parents sufficiently to gain acceptance. Marks may overdo the cultural and religious differences a tad—the pair were nonreligious before they encountered one another—but the jaunty narrative overcomes this wrinkle.

The second third of the book describes how the following forty years saw ups and downs, but more of the former than the latter. Marks lectured at an R1 university; partnered with Bernie in establishing a successful business; ran successfully for office as a “green GOP” politician supportive of John McCain; wrote a historical novel; supported a career change for Bernie, who segued into creating fine art; and ultimately moved to Santa Fe. In 2011, however, Bernie was diagnosed with viral encephalitis, and when he came home from the hospital he was Marks’s “brain-damaged, seizure-prone husband.”

The remainder of the work documents the final years of Bernie’s life. Marks is forthright in her shock at the abrupt change in living circumstances, as she became Bernie’s carer: the child she had never wanted, to paraphrase her comment to a friend. And yet even this massive change was compounded by another; shortly afterward, Bernie contracted the disease for a second time. On this occasion, it left him with (among other things) “left neglect,” meaning his brain was unable to perceive things on his left side. Marks rues the cruelty of her formerly healthy-living husband being struck by such a destructive malady.

Lives are full of ups and downs; it is the lot of many of us that some downs are horrifyingly swift in arrival and agonizing in duration. Marks’s memoir is characterized by honesty about the downs and gratitude for the ups that preceded them.

In BETTING ON BERNIE: A Memoir of a Marriage, Martha Marks touchingly details her 50-year marriage with businessman-turned-fine artist Bernie. More sincere and self-assured than most memoirs, this work is a testament to love’s complexity and beauty.

~Craig Jones for IndieReader