Grief Biography

Carol Kent has lived every parent's nightmare. After her only son was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Carol's life took a permanent detour. She and her husband, Gene, have been adjusting ever since, moving to Florida to be near the prison, starting a new ministry...

What if you came home one day and found your husband dead in his favorite chair? This grief memoir explores the author’s experience of the unexpected death of her husband from sudden cardiac arrest a mere three months after his doctors had pronounced him hale and healthy. The author shares her experiences in the immediate aftermath of the abrupt shock of discovery, reminisces about the details of the couple’s late-in-life courtship and marriage, and imparts other experiences she has had along the grieving road in the years since becoming a widow.

On a stormy late May morning in 2008, TACA Airlines Flight 390 crashes at Honduras’s Toncontin International Airport, one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Five people die in the crash—among them Rossana D’Antonio’s brother, pilot Cesare D’Antonio. Suspecting Cesare will be made a scapegoat for the accident, as so often happens to pilots, Rossana decides to leverage her decades of experience as an engineer and set out in search of the truth.

An illuminating, intricately woven memoir about friendships, loss, and language—a stunning affirmation of the conversations that shape and sustain us, even in the presence of death.

Learn strategies and skills firsthand as you travel with Amy on her quest for happiness as she recovers from living a self-sacrificing life that ultimately depleted her and brought her to her knees. Be encouraged as Amy navigates her way to happiness by learning how to lean into the discomfort that comes with fearing vulnerability, maintaining a non-wavering resiliency, and committing to long-term therapy.

Reality, as Eileen Robertson Hamra perceived it, was instantly altered the moment authorities confirmed that the plane her husband was piloting had crashed and he had not survived. With her three young children, Eileen entered the desolate world of grief and loss, but where she arrived was nothing short of miraculous. Between the valleys of grief and the peaks of hope, she discovered that keeping promises to the dead is a lifelong act, and honoring one love does not mean forgoing the freedom and joy that is found in reopening your heart.

In What We Wish Were True, Quinn achingly grapples with the possibility of leaving behind the husband and children she adores, and what it means to live with a terminal diagnosis and still find meaning. “I think about how my purpose may be the same in death as it continues to be in life—surrendering to the hope that our weaknesses can be made strong, that what is broken can be made whole,” she writes.

Thaïs is almost two. Like most well-loved children, she is happy. She laughs as she runs on the beach. But her footprints in the sand, with toes turned out, tell a different story. Two Small Footprints in Wet Sand relates the overwhelming tragedy experienced by a family as a result of a genetic disorder.

“When I say Jenna Blum’s upcoming Woodrow on the Bench wrecked me and that I’m now sobbing eating all the chocolate, I mean it in the best way possible.”—Jodi Picoult ""Jenna Blum's wonderful moving memoir, is a “girl and her dog” story for the ages!”—Garth Stein, author of...

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes - lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked - McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

On a summer day in New York, Jonathan Santlofer discovers his wife, Joy, gasping for breath on their living room couch. After a frenzied 911 call, an ambulance races across Manhattan, and after hours pacing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor finally delivers the fateful news. Consumed by grief, Jonathan desperately tries to pursue life as he always had - writing, social engagements, and working on his art - but finds it nearly impossible to admit his deep feelings of loss to anyone, not even his to beloved daughter, Doria, or to himself. Includes a Bonus PDF of author drawings.

Mesmerized, at times unnerved, by his 97-year-old father's nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this exhilarating book - both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion. It's an exploration that paradoxically prompts a renewed and profound appreciation of life.

A moving essay collection promoting freedom, self-love, and divine wholeness for Black women and opening new levels of understanding and ideological transformation for non-Black women and allies “Candice Marie Benbow is a once-in-a-generation theologian, the kind who, having ground dogma into...

For all women looking to find “hope in a hopeless world and bravery in an age that seems to lack it,” comes a searing memoir by Shannon Dingle, a writer and disability advocate who has navigated loss, trauma, abuse, spiritual reawakening, and deep pain—and come out the other side still...

At the age of 18, Tré Miller Rodríguez gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. At 19 her only sibling was killed in a car accident. At 34 her husband, Alberto, died of a sudden heart attack. But at 36 her teenage daughter found her on Facebook and began to reshape the course of Tré's life.

La enfermedad y la muerte de una hija, ¿cómo sobrellevar un terremoto así? Isabel Bohorquez tanteó con las palabras hasta poder decir lo que significó para ella la pérdida de Florencia. "Cuando Dios parece injusto" refleja su búsqueda por encontrarle un nuevo sentido a la vida después de la experiencia más dolorosa.

Hay en estas páginas una crisis de fe, que desemboca en la bella correspondencia con el monje benedictino Mamerto Menapace. Y muchas personas que se acerquen a leer el testimonio de Isabel sentirán, seguramente, cómo estos diálogos puedan acompañarlas...

The stunning and heartbreaking story of the young son of Rachel Nickell - who witnessed the brutal attack on his mother and whose childhood was shaped by the media storm that followed. A coming-of-age story that begins with a tragedy but ends in optimism, forgiveness and peace.

A writer friend once pointed out that whenever Stuart Ross got close to something heavy and “real” in a poem, a hamburger would inevitably appear for comic relief. In this hybrid essay/memoir/poetic meditation, Ross shoves aside the heaping plate of burgers to wrestle with what it means to grieve the people one loves and what it means to go on living in the face of an enormous accumulation of loss.

A bright light was extinguished in the universe on January 13, 2004, when 21-year old Rebekah Swanson, a college senior, died in a car accident. In More Than Can Be Measured, author Rona Swanson, Rebekah’s mother, shares her thoughts, feelings, and emotions as she and the family deal with their grief in the aftermath of Rebekah’s sudden death. Weaving in entries from Rebekah’s journal and photos, this memoir shares the wisdom and understanding Swanson gained as she felt the stark pain of the loss of her daughter.

Modern families come together in all sorts of ways—one parent, two parents; same sex, opposite sex; planned, unplanned; biological, adopted. There are examples of different sorts of families all around us. Finding Mac tells the story of how one family came together, as Richard and his wife Swee welcome eight-year-old Mac into their lives. It recounts the highs and lows as they get to know and love each other becoming a successful family unit. Along the way it shares their experience of adoption, and particularly the experience of adopting an older child.