Cartography of Loss - by Karen Paul (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

For fans of Jenny Lisk's Future Widow, a tender memoir-in-essays about rebuilding after losing a spouse to brain cancer, Cartography of Loss explores caregiving and reveals how life after loss reshapes everything, even new love.

When her husband is diagnosed with glioblastoma, Karen Paul becomes a full-time caregiver overnight. Their marriage, the landscape of which had always shown fractures, is instantly and radically transformed. Years after the long vigil of illness and his death, Karen faces the uneasy recalibration that follows and a new identity she never asked for: widow.

Told in three parts, Cartography of Loss chronicles the very particular and personal--from hospital corridors and hospice visits to tattoos and the strange circumstance of falling in love again. Along the journey, readers bear witness through stages of early widowhood, life's continuance in spite of unbearable grief, and the echoes of losses compounded over a lifetime.

Exploring how a widow must learn to map out her life in new ways after devastating loss, Paul's is more than a grief memoir, it's a clear-eyed, often funny exploration of how loss rearranges a life--and proof that even after the unimaginable, there is a way forward, one essay at a time.

Review Quotes

"In this collection of very personal, yet somehow universal, essays, Paul lets us in as her old life vanishes, as she wonders how her children will survive their grief, and ultimately, as she finds life again."--Jenny Lisk, author of Future Widow and Finding My Voice, and founder of Widowed Parent Institute

"Karen Paul digs into the marrow of grief, of living and of surviving with the most gorgeous, unblinking eye. Her candor and transparency about some of the most painful things that can happen to a human is a gift."--Leslie Gray Streeter, author of Black Widow

"Karen Paul chronicles unimaginable loss with courage. This profound memoir reminds us that loss and joy can coexist and that telling our stories helps light the path for others walking through darkness."--Sheryl Sandberg, founder and author of Lean In and Option B

"Life. Death. Love. Loss. Karen Paul explores and deconstructs these large thematic concerns in her stunning and important memoir. This memoir is not a treatise of self-sacrifice, however. It's far more emotionally complex, nuanced, and wrenchingly honest. You won't get easy answers reading this book--and thank goodness for that. Instead, you'll learn about the heart's multi-faceted chambers."--Sue William Silverman, author of Selected Misdemeanors

"Paul's debut memoir takes the reader on an intimate journey into her family's home and her damaged marriage, while showing us the true meaning of commitment and the weight of the vow 'for better or for worse'."--Jennifer Lang, author of Places We Left Behind

"Karen Paul's searing essays about losing her husband to brain cancer resist the feel-good parameters of grieving as 'process.' Rather, we're guided sensitively and honestly through necessarily raw territory. Essential reading for anyone who has ever felt unmoored by loss or isolated in their heartbreak. Karen Paul sees you."--Leslie Pietrzyk, author of This Angel on My Chest

"A book of such beauty and resolve that readers can't help but feel truly inspired, and not just by the stories, but by the artful prose, the ways in which language both conveys pain and shields us from it, because the author has herself found a way through."--Patrick Madden, author of Disparate

"Resisting the temptation to twist loss into a storybook ending, Karen Paul's frank and powerful Cartography of Loss instead offers us something real. This is a bracingly wise exploration of death's before, during, and after."--David Ebenbach, author of Possible Happiness

"Cartography of Loss is a clear-eyed, compassionate meditation on how grief shapes a life. Her [Paul's] voice is honest and wry; a companion for anyone navigating sorrow and seeking a way forward."--Rebecca Soffer, author of The Modern Loss Handbook

"Cartography of Loss is the rare grief book that tells the truth: that love, resentment, devotion, exhaustion, dark humor, and bone-deep loneliness can all coexist in the same hour. I will be pressing this book into the hands of mourners, caregivers, and the friends who want to help them; it is a fiercely honest, unexpectedly comforting companion that gently insists that every feeling along the way is heartbreakingly normal."--Rabbi Shira Stutman, author of The Jewish Way to a Good Life and co-host of Chutzpod

"These essays are a meditation--a tapestry of past and present; a 'grief gospel' and act of reclamation. Paul writes with precision and grace about the overlapping losses that have shaped her life. Forsaking easy answers in favor of hard-won insight, Cartography of Loss accomplishes what the best writing does. By holding one life honestly up to the light, it refracts far beyond itself. A brilliant collection. Unflinching and wise. An absolutely powerful debut."--Sonja Livingston, author of Ghostbread

About the Author

Karen Paul has written about caregiving, parenting, marriage, death, loss, and grief for outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Lilith, Modern Loss, Open Secrets, and Motherwell, as well as literary magazines and anthologies. Her short story "Vertigo" won the Lilith Short Fiction Contest. Karen holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and facilitates grief-writing workshops locally and online. She lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, with Bo, a black-and-white dog who rescued her family.