Review: The Truth Within: A Humanist’s Memoir by Leonard M. Cachola

Author and artist Leonard M. Cachola has composed an emotive exploration of life’s vicissitudes in his engrossing memoir, The Truth Within.

Son of a hotheaded, alcoholic, and often abusive father and a calm and mostly forgiving mother, Cachola found solace in the fantasy worlds of arcade gaming and comic books. He created pictures at an early age, ran a cartoon strip for his college newspaper, and eventually launched a laudable career in graphic arts. As he sought balance in his life, he pursued diverse hobbies that included autocross racing, dancing, and photography.

His girlfriends ranged from the rather raunchy Carrie, who was involved in pornographic posing and the seedy realm of escorts but proved a loyal friend when the chips were down, to Emma, whose feminist principles were too overwhelming to permit a long-term relationship, to Amy and Becky who became “just friends,” and finally Zoe, who drew him into the Mormon faith…almost.

Woven among these intimate, entertaining memories is another, darker aspect: Cachola’s near encounter with death in the form of testicular cancer. In his recollection, cancer looms almost as a character – dangerous, frightening, a foe to be battled against, the odds in its favor seeming to be overwhelming. A young man when he was invaded by this especially problematic disease, he had many crucial choices to weigh: whether to undergo a procedure known as RPLND (Reoperitoneal Lymph Node Dissection) or have chemo and RPLND, or simply to have surgery and wait it out with constant monitoring of his progress. He chose the latter, and though it involved a long period of almost daily testing, eventually the cancer threat, which provides the dramatic opening and closing of Cachola’s narrative, was gone.

The “humanism” from the title is an undercurrent throughout, though Cachola doesn’t hit this note too hard. More, Cachola talks about everyday life, while his story of facing mortality gives him new perspective on life’s meaning. Religion also plays a significant role in Cachola’s active, artful life. From an upbringing in a nominally Catholic family, he kept company with Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Mormons. But his questioning mind constantly interjected itself, making him wonder why the Bible’s God placed so much stress on a single sin committed by the first couple, or why, if Jesus came to save the world, there were still so many horrors – including cancer like his – to be faced, even by believers. Eventually, after much mind and soul searching, he has become a contented, committed member of a Unitarian Universalist fellowship, giving the book a decidedly spiritual focus.

Cachola is a writer of great insight who fashions his personal struggles like those of a modern everyman, always hoping to fall in real love, always examining and questioning ultimate truth, and always paying attention to his professional obligations and advancing in his career. He says he wrote this memoir in six weeks and edited it for seven years. Considering that a wide variety of readers will be engaged by the many subject areas that have impacted him – health, hobbies, career and romance – the book is well worth the effort expended.