A Broken Heart Still Beats: When Your Child Dies [Hardcover]

Anne McCracken (Editor, Introduction), Mary Semel (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1998

Hazelden Hardcover, copyright 1998 with 294 pgs. - A remarkable collection of poetry, fiction, and essays compiled by a journalist and a social worker, both of whom have lost child. It gets to the heart of this hardest of trials. Raymond Carver, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Shakespeare, Jill Ker Conway, Judith Guest, Dominick Dunn, Ann Morrow, Lindbergh, and Albert Camus are among the writers whose works explore the shock, the grief, and the search for meaning that come with the death of a child. Seasoned with wisdom and experience, their words offer rare comfort and insight to those who need it most.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The grief felt by a parent following a child's death is the theme of this book, edited by two mothers who share that unfortunate experience. As a cathartic exercise, McCracken and Semel assembled articles and excerpts-some fiction, some nonfiction-that featured the death of a child. They have also written a brief introduction to each chapter, describing a different stage of the grieving process and how it affected their lives.

The book contains a remarkable miscellany of emotionally charged literature by the likes of Melville, Frost, Shelley, Irving and Shakespeare. Each selection describes bereavement in a different way, lending credence to the editors' belief that no one can claim to understand another person's particular loss or its effects. The excerpted literature is of impeccable quality, as are the sentiments behind each piece. What's more, the editors' introductions to each chapter convey intense emotion sans the maudlin trappings that characterize many a self-help book. This book does not seek to instruct the reader on how to cope with grief, it merely shares the eloquence of those who have been there before. Highly recommended. -- Today's Librarian, September 1, 1999

Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: Hazelden Publishing & Educational Services; First Edition edition (November 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568382014
• ISBN-13: 978-1568382012
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #545,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shared experiences ease the pain of loss., August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Broken Heart Still Beats: When Your Child Dies (Hardcover)

I grew up knowing that my grandfather experienced the loss of a child, but I never gave it much consideration. One thing I wish I could do today, six years after the death of my 10-year-old son, is bring my deceased grandfather back to tell him my story and listen to him talk about the death of his only son during World War Two.

Anyone who has lived through the loss of a child will feel a lightening of the heart as they recognize their own experiences and thoughts in the words of others. This book is a valuable collection of work from gifted writers who had those experiences and thoughts.

Rabindranath Tagore's poem, "The End", reaches so deep it's painful, but I find myself reading it over and over because it puts my feelings to words in a way I can't. So now, because I read this book, eight simple words, artfully arranged by Tagore, will always be with me when I think of my son; "He is in my bones and in my soul."

Thank you, Anne and Mary, for giving me something like talking to my grandfather.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a book for later, May 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Broken Heart Still Beats: When Your Child Dies (Hardcover)

I tried to read this book within a few months of my daughter's death and thought I had wasted my money. Now that the 1st year is behind us, I have picked the book up again and find it is what I need. I would not recommend it to those whose grief is still fresh, there are better books for that time. ("The Worst Loss" and The Phoenix Phenomenon" are 2 that my husband and I found helpful.) Let some of the fog and shock lift, and then read this book. Some of my favorite selections are from authors who lived 50 or more years ago; their ability to express the ache of losing a child is amazing.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich, moving anthology of fine literature on grief, October 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: A Broken Heart Still Beats: When Your Child Dies (Hardcover)

This is not, it's refreshing to say, a self-help book. (Neither is it exclusively for those who've lost a child.) The authors have put together something much deeper and more complex. Drawing on literature throughout the ages and throughout the world--from Sophocles to Mark Twain to Rita Dove to Abraham Verghese--McCracken and Semel take the reader on a journey that is at once inspiring and heartbreaking. They, and the writers whose work they present, are unfailingly honest and vivid in their portrayal of grief. They shun the simplistic "just follow these steps and everything will be okay in the end" approach-- nobody here will try to convince you that you have to "get over" it. Some things in life, these writers point out, you don't get over; you just learn to live with them. And it's no failure or weakness or unwillingness to "do the steps." Read this book--whether you've suffered the catastrophic loss of a child or another kind of loss--to see what great writers have to say about learning to live again. And the next time you pick up a poem by Robert Frost, remember that he lost not one, but four, of his children.