Reader Comments and Reviews:

These are excerpts of comments and reviews by people who have read Walks on the Beach With Angie: A Father’s Story of Love. If you would like to like to leave a comment about the website or the book, please leave a submission in our Guestbook. We appreciate your comments!

Amazon Review by Stephanie Simonson (5 Stars on Amazon)
Walks on the Beach with Angie is Don Warner’s tribute to his daughter who died at age 21 due to complications resulting from cystic fibrosis, a fatal genetic disease. He talks realistically about giving treatments by pounding methodically on Angie’s back while she lay on his knee. He talks about the normalcy she created for herself growing up. She decided when she went to school that she did not want her classmates or friends to know about her disease and kept it a secret until she turned 19. Don talks about trips they took to Laguna Beach. Angie did serious shopping with her mom Linda during the day and had serious conversations with her dad at night while walking along the beach. This true story gives description of a real life and making the best choices possible given limited time on earth. She was a real kid and lived not that far from me, not that long ago. I found it easy to relate to each person described.

While the disease is awful, this story did not dramatize what happened. In some places, the author spared the reader gruesome details from Angie’s last days in the hospital and simply told us the effect something had. It would be quite academically interesting to compare this book with Frank Deford’s Alex: The Life of a Child. The writing style is quite different as are parts of the cystic fibrosis experience due to living at different times with different knowledge and technology available. Angela’s honesty and normalcy drew me in. I cried while reading about the very last days Angie had. My heart goes out to the family. The closing of the book talks about the family’s grief and how they continued living after Angie’s death. They created a foundation, an endowment fund, and a Children’s Memorial and Prayer Garden all to honor Angela’s memory. This is a heartwarming and sad love story between parents and daughter, and is accurate in descriptions of cystic fibrosis. For anyone who knows what it is like to lose a loved one or battle a disease, or anyone who simply wants to walk a day in someone else’s shoes and learn a new perspective on life, this book is for you.

Armchair Interviews by Bob Pike, CSP, CPAE (4 Stars on Amazon)
Angie Warner was a bright, pretty fun-loving teenager with a secret.  And for over twenty years she kept that secret from nearly everyone but her closest family members.  Throughout those twenty years she lived an apparently normal life.  She did well in school, was a varsity cheerleader, dated on and off, had time for close friends, and reached out to everyone with a brilliant smile.

And through it all she carried within her a chronic illness that would periodically sap her strength, would require never-ending daily multiple therapies and periodic hospitalization and would take her from this earth early: Cystic Fibrosis. I can identify with this story because my two youngest sons, Andrew and John, now in their mid 20s have the same disease and have been treated at the same hospital with the same doctors.

Don Warner tells Angie’s story through a father’s eyes. It is a story not only of Angie’s love for her parents, Don and Linda, and for her many friends, but also a story of their love for her. It chronicles her unique decision to not let anyone outside of a small inner circle know if her disease to avoid misplaced pity and to experience as much of the normal life her friends experienced as possible.

The title of the book comes from the many walks Angie and her Dad took on her favorite beach at their favorite vacation spot.  It is a father’s recollection of their many conversations, the tough choices she needed to make, and the grace and peace with which she led her life–including the final 86 painful days.

Amazon Review by Publisher and Author Tracy Winters (5 stars on Amazon)
A Story Of Unending Love: Walks on the Beach with Angie is an incredible story of the unending love that exists between parents and their child…between a father and daughter. As the dad of two healthy daughters, I can only imagine the courage it takes to help your child deal with the effects of cystic fibrosis. But, I know well the love of a parent for his children, and had tears streaming down my cheeks as I read the of those last days parents Don and Linda shared with Angie in the hospital, and made the decisions that were so hard to make, but were best for their beloved daughter.

This book also tells the story of an amazing young woman, who lived a lot of life in just 21 years. Angie’s courage, as she privately dealt with her illness, but never used it as an excuse, is inspiring. This book should be read not only by those dealing with illness or loss, but by anyone who wants a glimpse of a family demonstrating grace through adversity. Highly recommended.

Amazon Review by Executive & Mother “Kimberly” (4 Stars on Amazon) A testimony to a special child written with love: Does the father/daughter connection last forever? I think that we all hope for something so deep. I am blessed with a relationship such as this, and I found that same feeling in Walks on the Beach with Angie. A father’s story of undying love for his daughter. The two had weathered everything life threw at them, until life was interrupted by death.

At the age of 22, Cystic Fibrosis took the final breaths of Angie Warner. Don Warner does a wonderful job sharing his daughter’s life’s story and their struggles with overcoming Cystic Fibrosis. Grieving is tough stuff and Don is able to create a wonderful story of self-examination, friendship, love and his daughter’s courageous journey to make a difference on this Earth. Don shares his grief with readers through a lifetime’s reflections of his daughter, their life together, their family’s struggles with cystic fibrosis, his own personal struggles with his loss and his desire to go on.

Here is a book that takes raw emotion of a man and makes it an offering to help others who are grieving. The real emotion is evident, and Mr. Warner shares the disbelief, the utter sadness and devastation that we go through when we lose someone so close to us, to help educate others on cystic fibrosis. This is more than a memoir but a meaningful message to those who are struggling with this disease state and its many challenges. It is also a tale of a family coping in their own way, one day at a time and of a young girl who was brave and showed that life is truly not measured by the years you live but by the things you do with the time you have.

Grief is different for all of us, but so similar too, that sharing with another can only be helpful in some way. Through the friendship and love that continue to surround Don and his wife, he has begun to cope and heal and help others who are stricken with Cystic Fibrosis. For anyone who knows what it is like to lose a loved one or battle a disease this book is for you.

This book is an intense tale of some of the lessons we must learn on life’s journey. The story touched home for me having a friend’s child suffer through the challenges of Cystic Fibrosis – being given a “life sentence” of under 20 years, having a lung transplant and recently celebrating her 30th birthday – you learn that life is fragile and unpredictable. Thank you Don for “sharing your daughter with me” through this book. 

Readers write in:

“Read this book if you want to understand how one girl and her family chose to live life to the fullest despite a chronic and debilitating illness. Read this book if you want to experience examples of unconditional love. Read this book if you want to see how options can be explored and choices made–when there don’t seem to be any options or choices. Read this book if you want to be reminded of the strength of the human spirit.” -Reader

“Your book was heart touching and moving beyond what words can express. I couldn’t put it down. I found myself going through a kaleidoscope of emotions as I read your journey of Angela’s life and death. It moved me to realize the challenges of those who quietly fight for life each day, while others take it for granted.”  -Jennifer

“Your efforts to honor your beautiful daughter are touching many lives.”  -Cynthia

“I read your book in three nights and cried every night I was reading. I too share in the loss of someone so dear to CF…my very best friend whom I had known since I was five. Charlie died while awaiting a double lung transplant at the age of 38.  Reading your story of the many long days and nights spent in the ICU ‘family room’ brought back many memories…many days where family and friends would wait around the clock, sleeping on the floor and on chairs of the ICU waiting room which people had started to refer to as Camp Charlie…waiting with hope that lungs would arrive in time, waiting for our miracle. Thank you for sharing your story so that those of us who never got a chance to meet Angela to love her through your book and we can now hold her close in our hearts too.”  -Kathryn

“Your love for Angie shines through on every page.”  -Lee Ann

“The love and devotion of you and your wife for Angela was apparent. What a beautiful person–inside and out.  It was enlightening to hear about the waiting room experience. [Nurses] get so busy on the unit that not enough thought is given to that ‘worry room,’ as you so aptly coined it.  There is forever the struggle to balance the emotional needs with the tasks that must be carried out.  How could Angela not be pleased and honored with the projects you have initiated in her memory?  You are an inspiration.”  -Sue, RN

“Your book is amazing, and of course, heartbreaking. I want my family members and close friends to read it–so they can really know what we have gone through in the last 17 years, and what kind of special people CF parents are, and what extraordinary people CF patients are.  There are many similarities in your book that are like my story (so far).  Your book has renewed my life, and I am once again ready to fight this awful disease with [my children].  When things are going well, you don’t really dwell on CF, and you start getting kind of lazy and not doing that last Neb because it’s late.  Well, no more of that!  I have fought for 17 years and will continue until God says ‘that’s it!’”  -Terri, mother of two children with CF

Book Jacket Comments:

“As a father who also lost a daughter to cystic fibrosis, I do not have to be reminded how terrible and sad the experience is. But Don Warner’s lovely memoir about his daughter, Angela, is a story that can teach us all something about love and courage. Walks on the Beach with Angie: A Father’s Story of Love is as unsparing in its account of how awful and painful the disease can be, as it is uplifting in describing the young woman’s valiant battle. Above all, it is a magnificent tribute to Angela and to her family who cared so and suffered so. “—Frank Deford, author of Alex: The Life of a Child

“Walks on the Beach with Angie: A Father’s Story of Love is a story of love, hope, anguish, perseverance, grief, searing loss and transformation.”  —Richard A. Johnson, Ed.D., Ph.D.

“A new part of my research has been stimulated by Don Warner’s book.” —Warren J. Warwick, M.D.