Best-selling author, commercial airline pilot, and
retired air crash investigator L.B. Johnson knows exactly how she got here. She
just never expected to arrive quite so soon.
In The Serenity Chronicles,
Johnson turns her attention from wreckage to reflection. A bout of septic shock
and its lasting consequences forced her to reconsider not only the future she
had imagined after retirement, but the very meaning of time. Rather than
measure life by what remained, she chose to live more deliberately in the days
she had.
Written as a series of candid, sometimes irreverent
vignettes, this literary memoir wanders through subjects that initially seem
wonderfully random, yet gradually reveal an unexpected coherence. Johnson
considers the changing landscapes of the body, the ghosts of family history,
the persistence of faith, the enduring gifts of love, and the peculiar
indignities that aging so generously provides.
There is grief here, and an honest reckoning with
mortality. But there is also laughter, gratitude, and the recognition that even
an imperfect life can contain extraordinary beauty.
Johnson writes frankly about what aging takes away—and what it gives in
return. Readers may wince in recognition, laugh at life’s absurdities, and find
some part of their own journey reflected in these pages. Because being alive is an exercise in enduring
surprise.
Sometimes,
serenity is not found in knowing what comes next.
Sometimes, it is found in being willing to find out.
