Overview

""Gracefully dances backwards... Gorelick's love, wit and wisdom ripple through time, page after page."" Heather Harpham, author of the Reese Witherspoon book club memoir, Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After Jacque Gorelick was just three when her parents divorced, six when her dad remarried, and eight when her mother's sudden death and her father's volatility sent her already crumbling family into even more upheaval. Her father takes her younger brother to Alaska, leaving her with her ex-stepmother to sift through the emotional wreckage. Neither orphan nor adoptee, Jacque struggles to heal and find belonging after years of chaos and loss. In her twenties, she meets the love of her life, marries him, and has a baby, finally finding long-sought stability. Then, just months after their son is born, Jacque's husband collapses on an afternoon jog and ends up on life support. For a harrowing ten days in an ICU waiting room, she must advocate for her husband's life while caring for their newborn, navigating tenuous family dynamics, and confronting the ghosts of her past. Map of a Heart is a deeply personal look at what it means to build a life when the foundation was fractured from the start. For anyone who has ever asked What makes a family?, this book offers an answer rooted in resilience, hope, and hard-won love.

Full Product Details

9783988322265

Table of Contents

Reviews

""In Map of a Heart Jacque Gorelick plunges readers into the single most terrifying moment of her life (young husband, new baby, fragile heart) and then gracefully dances time backwards to tell her family's creation story. Gorelick's love, wit and wisdom ripple through time, page after page."" Heather Harpham, author of the Reese Witherspoon book club memoir, Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After ""A powerful and honest examination of the tenuous nature of life, love, and family. Jacque Gorelick offers readers an intimate look at how a single medical emergency can alter the course of everything. Map of a Heart is a gripping story of survival, friendship, and holding onto hope in the face of impossible odds."" Elizabeth Silver, author of The Tincture of Time: A Memoir of (Medical) Uncertainty ""A fresh take on the epistolary memoir. Jacque Gorelick expertly refracts a whole, remark-able life through the prism of ten unforgettable days. Map of Heart throbs with dramatic tension and offers a poignant reminder that, sometimes, miracles do happen."" Genevieve Kingston, author of Did I Ever Tell You? ""This book is for all of us who've lost family members, through estrangement or death or both, and wonder how we'll build something lasting with our seemingly faulty foundations. Jacque Gorelick's, Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home, beautifully digs into all of our paralyzing concerns of not enoughness and shows us the life-changing love that is possible if only we keep going. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and continue choosing ourselves, our healing, and our joy. Map of a Heart, is an inspiring and hopeful read that helped me feel less alone on my journey."" Alyson Shelton, award winning screenwriter, essayist, and co-editor of The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss, and Hope ""An intimate and vivid portrayal of the day time stopped for Gorelick and her young fami-ly, Map of a Heart delves deeply into sudden trauma, unresolved grief, family bonds, and the courage it takes to truly show up for the ones you love. This powerful, voice-driven story will leave you breathlessly turning pages until the very end."" Aileen Weintraub, author of Knocked Down: A High Risk Memoir ""Having lost her mother at 8 and with few family ties, Jacque Gorelick's dreams are threatened when her husband suffers a cardiac arrest. With unflinching honesty, she keeps us riveted to the present crisis-wondering if he'll survive and, if so, whether he'll be the man she's known. Throughout, she deftly weaves in the story of her tumultuous childhood, tentative familial bonds, and the birth of her first child, creating a book I couldn't stop reading. Map of a Heart is, at its core, a story of resilience, a vulnerable and compelling testament to the power of be-lieving, even in our darkest times, that love and home await us in whatever form they take."" Casey Mulligan Walsh, author of The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted... Everything I Feared ""Moving between the harrowing hours in an ICU with her newborn and memories of navigating fractured family ties after the loss of her mother, Gorelick captures the raw intensity of crisis alongside quiet insights of reflection. Map of a Heart is a dramatic story of how love and con-nection are necessary to guide us through life's most uncertain moments. A deeply personal book, it explores what constitutes a family and who we can rely on in times of crisis-and be-yond-to sustain us with strength and belonging."" Mimi Zieman, award-winning author of Tap Dancing on Everest

Author Information

Jacque Gorelick is a former elementary school teacher who spent decades working with chil-dren and families before becoming a freelance writer. After spending her fractured childhood searching for belonging, Jacque pursued degrees in psychology and education at San Francisco State University. She has always been fascinated by how family shapes and defines us and how we ultimately choose to define it for ourselves. Her essays exploring the complexities of identity, motherhood, and the search for belonging have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, HAD, Healthy Women, HuffPost and oth-ers. A California native, Jacque has lived all over the West Coast, from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues. Visit: jacquegorelick.com.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available