Book cover of Love in the Archives

Book description

Winner of a 2022 Gold Royal Palm Award- Florida Writers Association
Winner of the 2023 Sarton Women's Book Award for Memoir
Winner of 2024 Pencraft Award - Literary Excellence
Finalist 2023 Foreword Indies -Grief/Grieving

When her fifteen-year-old daughter Lydia ends her life, Eileen finds support in a community of bereaved…

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Why read it?

3 authors picked Love in the Archives as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

The loss of a child is a difficult topic to read about but the author's writing style invites you in. This book has deservedly won awards because the author's writing is crisp, unique, and clever. It's a book of essays and the voice of each one changes, often imbuing humor into this sad topic which elevates it. Anyone grieving a child or who has experienced the loss of a loved one should read this book.

I can't imagine a topic as sensitive as suicide loss being delivered more tenderly than in this book. It broke my heart and punched me in the gut and made me laugh. Only a brilliantly skillful author can pull that off. Vorbach collins did.

Eileen Vorbach Collins has a rare gift. Few writers are able to evoke the visceral grief of the suicide of a 15-year-old daughter, the most tragic and gut-wrenching of losses, while also leaving room for hope and even humor. In each essay she finds new angles into the truth of her experience; in every case, love is the underpinning that carries her--and us--through to a satisfying and genuine close, though of course her story has no end. Themes including the natural world and interfaith marriage round out these stories and leave us with a reading journey we're grateful to have…

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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