Poor Your Soul
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
Poor Your Soul—moving, wise, and passionately written—is a beautiful reflection on sexuality, free will, and the fierce bonds of family.
At twenty-eight, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she embraced the idea of starting a family and became engaged to Andrew, the father. Five months later, an ultrasound revealed that her child would be born with a constellation of birth defects and no chance of survival outside the womb. Mira was given three options: terminate the pregnancy, induce early delivery, or wait and inevitably miscarry.
Mira’s story is paired with that of her mother, who emigrated from Poland to the United States, and who also experienced grievous loss when her only son was killed by a drunk driver. These deftly interwoven stories offer a picture of mother and daughter finding strength in themselves and each other in the face of tragedy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ptacin is 28 and newly pregnant at the onset of this nicely paced, moving memoir of loss and renewal. Recently uprooted from an editing job in Maine, the Michigan-born author came to Manhattan to attend a writing program and live with her fianc , an engineer whom she met through an online dating service. Ptacin was shocked and ambivalent about the unplanned pregnancy (she had been on the Pill), but the couple readied for parenthood and eventually wed. Through flashbacks, she shares her Michigan upbringing in Battle Creek, and a loving family that includes an endearing physician father, a restaurateur mother who also holds a physics degree, and two siblings. As a teen, the author hangs out with the "bad kids," runs away from home for a brief period, and returns to make amends just as a tragic accident takes her young brother's life. Yet another tragedy befalls Ptacin as an adult; an ultrasound reveals that Ptacin's baby that it will not survive outside the womb, and she then must choose a method of terminating the pregnancy, an emotionally painful process she describes in detail. "Poor your soul" is a phrase Ptacin's mother uses, and it's an apt title for a book that delves deeply into the nature of grief. Ptacin's memoir is a raw and absorbing story of family fortitude and a young woman's struggle to confront and accept the unexpected.
