New Books In Literature

Jessica Hendry Nelson, Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief (University of Georgia Press, 2023) is a compelling memoir in essays. When Nelson's father died from an accident caused by complications of alcoholism, she knew immediately she had inherited his love-that it left his body, traveled through the air, and entered her own. And so, she needed a place to put it. She needed to know what to do with it, how not to waste it, how to make something with it, how to honor it and put language to it. So, she placed it with her brother, Eric, whose opioid addiction made his death feel always imminent. With her partner, Jack, together for thirteen years. With her exhausted, nicotine-addicted mother, her best friend Jessie, women at the gym she never met but loved completely. But mostly with her future child, the one she does not yet have but deeply wants. The child who is both the question of love-and the answer to it.  So, when Jack suddenly confesses that he does not want to have children-not with her, not ever-the