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The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After
by Heather Harpham
Book Reviewed by:A shirt-grabbing, page-turning love story that follows a one-of-a-kind family through twists of fate that require nearly unimaginable choices.
Happiness begins with a charming courtship between hopelessly attracted opposites: Heather, a world-roaming California girl, and Brian, an intellectual, homebody writer, kind and slyly funny, but loath to leave his Upper West Side studio. Their magical interlude ends, full stop, when Heather becomes pregnant - Brian is sure he loves her, only he doesn't want kids. Heather returns to California to deliver their daughter alone, buoyed by family and friends. Mere hours after Gracie's arrival, Heather's bliss is interrupted when a nurse wakes her, "Get dressed, your baby is in trouble."
This is not how Heather had imagined new motherhood – alone, heartsick, an unexpectedly solo caretaker of a baby who smelled "like sliced apples and salted pretzels" but might be perilously ill. Brian reappears as Gracie's condition grows dire; together Heather and Brian have to decide what they are willing to risk to ensure their girl sees adulthood.
The grace and humor that ripple through Harpham's writing transform the dross of heartbreak and parental fears into a clear-eyed, warm-hearted view of the world. Profoundly moving and subtly written, Happiness radiates in many directions - new, romantic love; gratitude for a beautiful, inscrutable world; deep, abiding friendship; the passion a parent has for a child; and the many unlikely ways to build a family. Ultimately it's a story about love and happiness, in their many crooked configurations.
TWO COASTS
1
My first child, my girl, was born just before seven on a spring night, perfect. She was compact and fully formed, a little over five pounds. She smelled like sliced apple and salted pretzels, like the innocent recent arrival from a saline world that she was.
But the midwife was worried. "She's small for gestational age," she kept saying. "Any problems or issues during pregnancy?"
I wanted to ask her if heartbreak counted. If sharing a bed with a good-hearted dog, rather than the baby's father, might do it.
"Also," the midwife said, "she looks a little jaundiced."
"That's just the Greek side," my mom cut in, "we're all yellow."
The midwife finally handed her over, a waxy, pinched little thing. Gory and unkempt. Not serenely smiling like the dolls of my youth. But a real baby, mine.
When I breathed her in, a straight, bright synaptic path lit up the center of my brain. Every neuron said to its neighbor, yes, yes, yes, yes, this is the one, yes. This...
This is the best book I have read this year (Arlene M). I loved everything about it (Barbara O). I started it on a rainy night, thinking I would fall asleep quickly, and ended up reading the entire book (Diane W)! It's so good, you will want to read it twice (Sherri G). I highly recommend this memoir, it was a definite page-turner and tear jerker (Miller W). It's one I will never forget and without any reservation recommend to all my friends and family (Candace F). Happiness would make an excellent book club selection (Barbara O)...continued
Full Review
(705 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Ann Hood, bestselling author of The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief
With intelligence and lyricism and compassion, Harpham gives us her story of the rocky road that sometimes leads right where you want it to. Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, bestselling author of The Nest
Told with abundant charm and insight, this book is a beautifully drawn portrait of one family - its comforts, disappointments and, on the very best days, moments of grace. Susan Cheever, bestselling author of Treetops: A Memoir, and Home before Dark
An extraordinary and bewitching book, Happiness has staked a claim among the most beautiful and moving portraits of parenthood and partnership.In Happiness: The Crooked Road to Semi Ever After, the author's newborn has a rare blood disease and requires a bone marrow transplant to survive.
Bones have soft tissue at their core called marrow; marrow contains immature or undifferentiated cells known as stem cells. There are two main types of stem cell: one produces bone, cartilage, marrow fat and other connective tissues, to repair and maintain the skeletal system. The other produces blood-forming cells, which produce the main constituents of blood - red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. When blood cell production is interrupted by disease, cancers (such as leukemia) or genetic abnormalities (such as sickle cell anemia), a person ...
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