Gail Griffin Libros

Gail Griffin's life changed drastically just four months into her marriage when her husband's body was discovered in the Manistee River, near their cabin. This memoir delves into the profound experience of grief, focusing on its impact on the mind, heart, and body, rather than simply recounting a love story. The narrative unfolds through ten essays, interspersed with four original poems, exploring themes of traumatic grief, memory, and survival. While there is a sense of progression, the structure defies linearity, presenting grief as a complex experience that transcends time. In "A Strong Brown God," Griffin reflects on her relationships with her husband, Bob, and the river, revealing the connections that bind them. "Grief's Country" captures the disorientation and fragmentation following Bob's death, while "Heartbreak Hotel" recounts a tragicomic Christmas trip to Jamaica, including an unexpected detour to Graceland, where she grapples with concepts of home and safety. This memoir resonates with anyone who has experienced loss, offering multiple perspectives on grief. It is also valuable for readers of memoir and those studying nonfiction, as it presents various formal styles. Additionally, it serves as a resource for those interested in death and dying, moving beyond conventional recovery narratives to convey the essence of grief itself.

Winner of the Two Sylvias Press Wilder Series Poetry Prize Gail Griffin's "Omena Bay Testament" takes us across landscapes of winter and water through the possibility of love and the tragedy of death to a ravishing moment where there is nothing left to want. An accomplished nonfiction writer, Griffin captures the fullness and limitations of being with remarkable depth and tenacity in her debut collection of poetry and prose. "I'm cloaked in the invisibility that comes to women at a certain point," she writes, and it is from that place of being off-stage where her narratives-harrowing, nuanced, layered-brilliantly forge a path between past and present, the living and the dead. I can't think of another book that gifts its readers with such a breadth of time and experience. Sweeping and seamless, Griffin shifts between wide and exacting gazes, from poems of quiet interiority to the larger breaking world, especially with her masterful sequence in response to news excerpts. This book is a life; it is a gift of integrity and lasting art. -Jennifer K. Sweeney