Introduction

“A gripping and beautiful book about the power of love in the face of unimaginable loss.”
 --Cheryl Strayed

For readers of The Bright Hour and When Breath Becomes Air, a moving, transcendent memoir of loss and a stunning exploration of marriage in the wake of unimaginable grief.

As the book opens: two-year-old Greta Greene is sitting with her grandmother on a park bench on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. A brick crumbles from a windowsill overhead, striking her unconscious, and she is immediately rushed to the hospital. But although it begins with this event and with the anguish Jayson and his wife, Stacy, confront in the wake of their daughter's trauma and the hours leading up to her death, Once More We Saw Stars quickly becomes a narrative that is as much about hope and healing as it is about grief and loss. Jayson recognizes, even in the midst of his ordeal, that there will be a life for him beyond it--that if only he can continue moving forward, from one moment to the next, he will survive what seems unsurvivable. With raw honesty, deep emotion, and exquisite tenderness, he captures both the fragility of life and absoluteness of death, and most important of all, the unconquerable power of love. This is an unforgettable memoir of courage and transformation--and a book that will change the way you look at the world.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2019: There’s a moment early in Once More We Saw Stars when Jayson Greene’s 2-year-old daughter, Greta, is in the hospital, hovering between life and death but slipping towards the latter, and “we glance around us, realizing this is the last we’ll ever see of the world as we’ve known it. Whatever comes next will raze everything to the ground.” That sentence illustrates how difficult it is to read this memoir without a lump in one’s throat. In the hierarchy of death, the death of a child is the worst, the one that makes people recoil. Those who experience such a trauma frequently talk about moving through a fog of grief, unable to recall the particulars of the days and weeks after the death, memories and heartstrings cauterized by the searing pain of loss. How amazing, then, that Greene can recall those particulars: the pain, the grief, the fears that their little family will never again experience joy, and the worry that his marriage cannot survive such loss. And that even in the midst of trauma he knows he and his wife have the tools and the traits to get out the other side, to refashion their broken life into one where they can laugh again. How they keep their eyes on that prize is what makes this memoir a heartbreaking but reassuring look at courage, resilience, our slim hold on life, and the bonds of family that make life precious. —Vannessa Cronin

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