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Review of Embracing the Power to Live by Marsha Ingrao

Kay Castaneda, September 29, 2025

Embracing the Power to Live is a memoir written in prose, verse, and photographs. Author Marsha Ingrao reflects on the milestones of her life such as childhood, moving, parents, friends, career, the death of her first spouse, and a second marriage. Her retirement as a teacher now gives her the opportunity to reflect about the deeper meanings and reactions to these episodes of her life. Ingrao contemplates her past life as she remembers how she felt about these events compared to her emotions now. She writes about the lessons learned from both good and negative incidents and how these can be used to help others. The author has used her gifts as inspiration for her writing. She writes about the value of these insights gained through self-reflection, which gives her encouragement to continue growing and embracing life.

I enjoyed Embracing the Power to Live and highly recommend the book to all those readers who like memoirs and inspirational books. Marsha’s original poetry makes the book unique. You will be entertained by how she weaves memories with free verse, syllabic poetry and photographs into a fascinating volume of faith, hope and inspiration. She has included an appendix of poetic forms plus helpful captions of her photographs. I discovered that Marsha and I both grew up in Indiana, so I especially enjoyed the reminiscences of her life there.

Marsha Ingrao began Story Chat Online Writing Group where she leads others to grow in their writing skills. She is the editor of several anthologies of stories and poems in Story Chat Volumes I and II. Marsha’s poetry, stories, and articles can be found in numerous anthologies and publications.

https://www.amazon.com/Embracing-Power-Live-Marsha-Ingrao-ebook/dp/B0F6423PSJ/

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Comments (10)

  1. DG Kaye says:
    September 29, 2025 at 12:06 pm

    Lovely review for Marsha’s book, Kay. I just reviewed it yesterday too. 😋

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    1. Kay Castaneda says:
      September 29, 2025 at 11:49 pm

      I’ll look for it Debby. Thanks for reading my review. 😍

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    2. Marsha says:
      October 3, 2025 at 5:45 am

      I am still doing my happy dance. I’ll be back over there today to finish responding. Thanks to both you and Kay. I am honored.

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      1. Kay Castaneda says:
        October 3, 2025 at 12:56 pm

        You’re welcome, Marsha! It took me awhile to do it because I was recovering from my injured foot. I loved your book.

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        1. Marsha says:
          October 4, 2025 at 12:53 pm

          Kay, I appreciate it so much! I’ll be featuring your review on my blog next Wednesday along with Debby’s and a book review of Jan Sikes’ book. xxxxx

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  2. petespringer says:
    September 29, 2025 at 2:21 pm

    This one is on my Kindle as of a couple of weeks ago. I’m looking forward to reading what Marsha has to say, as I love memoirs.

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    1. Kay Castaneda says:
      September 29, 2025 at 11:47 pm

      I believe you’ll like it, Pete. Marsha did a wonderful job on her memoir.

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      1. Marsha says:
        October 3, 2025 at 5:47 am

        Kay, thank you so so much. I’m so honored.

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    2. Kay Castaneda says:
      September 29, 2025 at 11:51 pm

      Thanks for reading my review, Pete!

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    3. Marsha says:
      October 3, 2025 at 5:46 am

      I’m with you, Pete. Memoirs and biographies have always been a favorite genre of mine since I was in about third grade and checking out my first books out of the library. :)

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