Giffels book reviewed by PD's Karen Long

The headline for a review of BJ columnist David Giffels book in today's Plain Dealer reads:

Giffels' home-renovation memoir a delight

Book Editor Karen R. Long writes:

Like a lot of writers, David Giffels hopes to make readers laugh and cry with his new memoir, "All the Way Home." His publicist hopes to see it sell as briskly as another domestic tale from a witty newspaperman, "Marley and Me."

We can see the parallel: charming narrator tells story of bad dog/bad house. In each book, bad carries its standard meaning and its street connotation: baaad, as in "formidable, not to be trifled with."

For Giffels, a puckish columnist at the Akron Beacon Journal, and his wife, Gina, a former teacher, it was game over in 1996 from the first glimpse of crystal twin chandeliers, still dangling in a Gilded Age mansion that was more wreck than remnant of anything habitable.

Except that inside the pair discovered a decrepit owner, huddled in a few rooms without running water or electricity, her osteoporosis forming her spine into a question mark, her orders strict that nothing be touched.

How the Giffelses come to buy this "absurd, stupendous place" for $65,000 is a suspenseful story in itself. The attic was "exploding with vegetation and wildlife," the Akron Department of Health had condemned the property, and the former owner refused to vacate.

The way the Giffelses resurrect this structure without sinking their marriage forms the struts of "All the Way Home." It's a pleasure to follow the author around the side and across the only working threshold.

Long adds later:

It's fun to think about LeBron James building his Sagamore Hills castle even as Giffels, a former Cavs ball boy, throws his 150-pound frame into restoring his own version nearby.

Click on the headline to read Long’s review

Read our earlier post on a New York Times Review of the book.