FLESH & BLOOD

A moving, well-rendered portrait of the seriously ailing artist.

Moss starts the first chapter with a definition of the word exsanguinate, chronicling how she was literally bleeding out in her creative writing class. From that bloody beginning, the author delivers an engaging, even charming memoir. At 52, she had known the grief of miscarriage and infertility for a decade, partly alleviated by her husband's excellent suggestion: "Hey, what if we just tried to be happy anyway? I mean we can't make the sadness go away, but maybe we can be happy too, at the same time?" Her alarming bleeding only increased in severity, opening a long season of incapacity, surgery, recovery, relapse, and, finally, healing. Throughout, it feels like Moss is taking our hands and allowing us to accompany her on this journey. Her careful, lovely sentences and good-humored and thoughtful observations seem to be as much a part of her healing as her 84-year-old mother, who came to care for her, her kind, hardworking husband, and the team of doctors she sees so often: “It gets so that I am comfortable having a room full of men bending down between my legs and looking in there like I am a car with my hood up. Get so comfortable in fact that I feel like I could walk around the doctor’s office half-naked and not feel self-conscious.” Another key figure is the author's late grandmother, whom she only knew for one year when she was 6 years old but whose memory inspires warmth and peace to this day. As in Jackie Polzin's recent novel Brood, to which this book is similar in spirit, the natural world plays an important role, but here, instead of chickens, there is a praying mantis named Claude and several cats, both domestic and feral.

A healing balm, this inviting memoir lights a path through grief and illness.