Oh, Jonathan! I think that was the first thought that rushed through my mind after reading the last few sentences of Hans Hirschi’s, Jonathan’s Hope. I simply adore books, when you finish reading them you feel devastatingly happy, which in my world is a mix of pure bliss mixed with complete and utter heartbreak.

I’ve read many books in my life, there are many that has touched me in different ways, and that I’ll always remember, Jonathan’s Hope will become another one of those books that will not only get that special place on my bookshelf those books you have that you want to read again, but you dread doing so because you know that emotional turmoil they will bring, but will be of great inspiration.

Jonathan’s Hope, is about a young man, who is a couple weeks shy of his 18th birthday when the book starts. He’s driven out into the woods by his parents and left there to die for no other reason than because he’s gay. His father is a troubled man, a monster really, who has lost all faith in himself as well as in humanity. The only way for him to be able to live with himself and his own pain, to be able to take that next breath, is to inflict pain on others. At first I hated Jonathan’s father by the end I felt nothing but sadness and how society with its bigotry had failed yet another person.

Jonathan is more or less freezing and starving to death in the woods, trying to find his way, when a man and his dog appear and lead the way to a remote cabin in the woods, where the man, Dan and his dog lives. Spite his shyness, Jonathan finds the courage to knock on the door to the cabin and asks for help.

Dan, who one year prior, to Jonathan showing up on his doorstep, lost his partner and love of his life, Sean, in a hunting accident, lives a quiet and isolated life in their cabin that he and Sean renovated together. He is refusing to live life to it’s fullest, missing his Sean every day. That day when the knock on the door comes, he’s startled and almost shocked to who was out there, and when he finds the half frozen to death young man on his doorstep all of Dan’s own worries, pain and focus on himself disappears and all he ses is a young man in distress who need his help.

Over the next coming weeks, and months, you get to follow this amazing journey of two individuals, their own journeys and the one that they take together. Dan becomes the family that Jonathan never had, show’s him simple pleasures, as enjoying a real good cup of coffee, getting presents, eating food of the gods, and learn how it is to be love and love right back. Dan’s heart gets a chance to heal, when he himself learns that if a man is real lucky he will have more than one great love in a life, one better than the other, just different. In Jonathan he finds life, a reason for living. Dan finds the will to fight for himself and for Jonathan and together they fight for each other, to be together.

This is not just some random love story, with a 30 year old man falling in love with a man 13 years his junior, or a boy that has been so severely abused by his father since birth, that learning the simple joy of coffee is like winning the lottery. Well at least not only that because obviously it is about love and finding it for the first time or again, but it is also about finding yourself, learning your own value and to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. It is about not hating those who done you wrong but being able to forgive them for what they done to you, so you can move on and start living the life you deserve.

The end, if the ending had been the last chapter that I know from Hans was the end, without the epilogue, this would still have been a great book, but with the epilogue it became a fantastic book. The epilogue is what made Jonathan’s Hope become full circle. It is the epilogue that wraps up what this entire book is about, and again Hans Hirschi shows us how important family ties are to him, how influenced maybe he is and in reality we all are by where we come from, but spite our genes, our past and the environment we are brought up in we all have a choice in who we become. Cruelty doesn’t necessarily give birth to cruelty, no, instead the choice is always in our own hands to turn the boat around and sail towards our own destination, even if we have to sail in headwind most of the time, there will always be a harbor waiting for us to arrive safely.
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It was with great curiosity that I set out to read this book, the fact that it was a personal gift from the author himself as we met for the first time right around Christmas, at a small cafe here in our hometown, Gothenburg was an amazing plus. 
Sitting down with an actual book, a real book in my hands was a treat I forgotten how special that was. It also took me about 50% through the book to stop tapping the pages and think that action would flip the pages for me, which you get use to after only reading on a kindle for two years.

Hans, mind you now I've only met him once, talked to him several times, but Hans is this exuberant, honest and most interesting man to talk too, and really what you see is what you get. Hans, is extremely proud of his family, of his husband and their boy, it shows every time he mentions them how much he loves them. Heart to heart loves, no questions about it. He's open with how he feels about things and shares it with ease, without it being shoved down your throat, and that makes it welcoming to get to know him. 
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For the little over two hours we sat and talk about books, writing and how we wrote and why, where did our ideas come from and about family the more it felt like I was meeting a friend from 20 years ago. Someone you known before but hadn't seen in a long time. 

So, why am I telling you about all of this for this review of Family Ties, because when getting this book from Hans he told me "this is my life story of sorts", at the time I didn't understand what those words meant but as I started reading Family Ties, and especially after finished reading Family Ties I understood maybe how personal it may actually be. 

I could see what little I had seen of Hans, and learned by listening to him talk about himself and observed, in many of the characters, Sascha especially. 

Family Ties, is exactly what the title says, a book about family and family bindings, what makes a family. It proves that family can be blood but it doesn't have to be, it shows that family can be that amazing man that saves you from living on the street, the man who loves you enough to dare live a life that is against society's norms, it can be those children that is part donor eggs, part surrogate mother and your partner's sperm, those children that isn't biologically yours, but still are by your loins and is more your family than the blood brother you never really got to know. 

Family Ties, is an emotional journey of a whole family through Sascha's eyes, he let us follow him to Australia where fate teaches him harsh lessons no man or woman for that matter should ever have to learn, it let us follow the journey that two men takes on to be able to start their own family, spite the fact that many countries and society has negative ideas about other than man/woman couples having children. It's about learning that it is never too late to finding a middle ground with your blood family even if years, maybe even decades has past, you can still find understanding and become a family. 

What I loved about this book the most are all the different stories weaved into one, and that they went so well together. You really got a full life story of Sascha and his husband Dan. You got to find out why their relationship was so special, understand why it works and was a match made in heaven. Hans really explains with such ease the connection of all relationships and why they were so important in Sascha's life and how they influenced him. 

Family Ties, sure as it says, is a #LGBT book in its rightful definition. I don't say this about a lot of authors, I may just have said it to one other author, and that is Hans Hirschi write classics, books that will be in every book shelf, read because they give meaning to anyone who reads them, explain societal issues, and gives us as readers and people of this society a greater understanding for how it is to live in the real world as man, with a family with skeletons in the closet, and who just happens to be gay. 

This is an author you have to read and experience on your own, Family Ties is a book I still over a week later of finish reading, still am thinking about and wonder in awe. I wonder how he manage to fit it all together so beautifully. That is just how good Hans Hirschi is at telling a story, he is a true storyteller. 

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You can find Hans on the following social medias:
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Webpage
Amazon