Vessels: A Love Story
By Daniel Raeburn
ISBN: 978-0-393-28538-3
Copyright 2016
Trade Paperback, 176
pages, $23.95
When Dan, a writer with a passion for underground comics, and his wife
Bekah, a potter dedicated to traditional Japanese ceramics, met through a
mutual friend at a Memorial Day party, they fell in love quickly. “Of all the
women I’ve ever met,” Dan told a friend, “she’s the first one who felt like
family.” But after spending Christmas with Dan’s family, tragedy struck. The
baby, whom Bekah and Dan named Irene, wasn’t moving and Bekah didn’t feel
right. The following day, Bekah went to the doctor only to find out that Irene
was dead. Leaving her with the only decision: deliver a stillborn.
After
the devastating loss of Irene, Dan and Bekah were stuck in a cycle of being
depressed and not wanting to live. Bekah spent most of that time being
stuck on bedrest while the rest of the world sped past her. She got to the
point where she was tired of everyone else doing the work for her and willed
herself out of bed. “She didn’t want to work with anyone who’d known her before
the birthday. When her fever receded she got dressed and rode a bus to the
skyscrapers downtown, where she took a job in an office where no one knew
anything about her but her name” (pp. 47).
A
little over a year, their wedding and honeymoon later, Bekah was pregnant
again. Knowing and remembering what happened with Irene, Bekah and Dan were on
edge about everything. And in hopes of not jinxing this pregnancy, Bekah and
Dan didn’t tell anyone. The baby was breech, so a C-section was scheduled, and
the baby was delivered with no problems. They named her Willa.
Based
on Daniel Raeburn’s acclaimed New Yorker essay, Vessels:
A Love Story is the story of how he and Bekah fought and clung to each
other through a miscarriage in December of 2003, a still-birth in December of
2004, a C-section in May of 2006 (Willa), a miscarriage in December of 2008,
and then finally having Hazel and joyfully becoming parents. In prose as
delightful as his wife’s pottery, Raeburn recounts a marriage cemented by the
same events that nearly broke it.
Vessels is an unwavering, immensely moving story of
intimacy, strength, and love.
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