The Heart Does Break

Book excerpt: A book in which some of our best writers address their own losses — and help us endure our own… A heartbreaking, comforting and beautiful collection of true stories about grief and mourning from some of Canada’s best known writers. When Jean Baird’s daughter, Bronwyn, died suddenly, Jean’s deep instinct was to turn to books to help her in her time of sudden loss. Although she found that the thoughts of counselors, psychologists, Buddhists, and self-help gurus were perhaps some help, the works that truly reached to the heart of the matter were by literary writers, largely from the UK and the US. Scanning the Canadian landscape, Jean and her husband George Bowering found elegies and tributes, but little from our writers about the person who is left behind to mourn or what it takes to endure grieving. The Heart Does Break — an anthology of twenty original pieces — sets out to fill that gap.