Firstborn A Memoir

“An achingly beautiful testament to fierce loss, fierce love and fierce resilience.” —People Magazine “You will find yourself rationing out pages to spend more time in the glow of Christensen’s luminous prose and inextinguishable love. A triumph.” —Oprah Daily (best new books to read this spring) A lapidary memoir of losing a child before she can be born, which the author began writing the day she came home from the hospital—an intimate story about our most searing losses and brightest hopes “Some days I still think this is all just a sad story I’ll tell Simone one day.” Lauren Christensen is a thirtysomething editor in New York City when she meets her future husband, Gabe, a writer with whom she falls in love right away. Her beloved grandfather is dying, but the young couple is bringing new life into the family: Lauren and Gabe joyfully discover she is pregnant with their daughter, Simone. As Lauren faces the prospect of becoming a parent, she learns to let go of the fear of abandonment and need for control instilled in her by growing up with a largely absent father and a high-powered mother who was often away on business.