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The Porcelain Heart

Name: The Porcelain Heart
Brand: She Writes Press
Price: 34.75 AUD
Availability: PreOrder

A Mother's Memoir of Unexpected Loss

By: Marcy Kelly

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Paperback | 27 October 2026

At a Glance

Format
Paperback

Dimensions(cm)
21.59 x 13.97

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$34.75

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Available: 27th October 2026

Preorder. Will ship when available.

Fans of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights will find inspiration in this mother’s memoir about the year following her son’s sudden death.

When Marcy learns her beloved forty-five-year-old son, Michael, has died, she refuses to believe it. He was her only child. Later, she blames herself because she didn’t recognize the signs of his illness. She has disturbing dreams about not saving him and spirals through the various stages of grief as she waits months for the coroner to render a cause. But the fifth and final stage of grief, Marcy rejects. In her mind, if she accepts Michael’s death, he won’t ever return.

The Porcelain Heart chronicles her raw emotional journey the year following Michael’s death. Marcy endures all the firsts without him—the holidays, his birthday. She joins grief groups, remembers frightening and fun times together, questions whether she was a good mother, and tries to distract herself with travel. She creates a golf scholarship in his name and commissions a stone people and pet fountain to be built on the path where he used to hike.

Her journey culminates when she takes his ashes to his favorite place, a lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and finally begins moving toward acceptance.

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