JACQUE GORELICK at Books Inc. Palo Alto

Jacque will be in conversation with fellow author Misa Sugiura. They will discuss belonging, loss, and resilience in the face of a medical crisis.

About the book: Jacque Gorelick was just three when her parents divorced, six when her dad remarried, and eight when her mother's sudden death and her father's volatility sent her already crumbling family into even more upheaval. Her father takes her younger brother to Alaska, leaving her with her ex-stepmother to sift through the emotional wreckage. Neither orphan nor adoptee, Jacque struggles to heal and find belonging after years of chaos and loss.

In her twenties, she meets the love of her life, marries him, and has a baby, finally finding long-sought stability. Then, just months after their son is born, Jacque's husband collapses on an afternoon jog and ends up on life support. For a harrowing ten days in an ICU waiting room, she must advocate for her husband's life while caring for their newborn, navigating tenuous family dynamics, and confronting the ghosts of her past.

Map of a Heart is a deeply personal look at what it means to build a life when the foundation was fractured from the start. For anyone who has ever asked What makes a family?, this book offers an answer rooted in resilience, hope, and hard-won love.

"Gracefully dances backwards... Gorelick's love, wit and wisdom ripple through time, page after page." Heather Harpham, author of the Reese Witherspoon book club memoir, Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After

Jacque Gorelick is a former elementary school teacher who spent decades working with chil-dren and families before becoming a freelance writer. After spending her fractured childhood searching for belonging, Jacque pursued degrees in psychology and education at San Francisco State University. She has always been fascinated by how family shapes and defines us and how we ultimately choose to define it for ourselves. Her essays exploring the complexities of identity, motherhood, and the search for belonging have appeared in The New York Times, Salon, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, HAD, Healthy Women, HuffPost and oth-ers. A California native, Jacque has lived all over the West Coast, from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues. Visit: jacquegorelick.com.

Misa Sugiura’s ancestors include a poet, a priestess, a samurai, and a stowaway. She was born and raised in Chicagoland but eventually found her way to her true home in Northern California, where she lives and writes under a giant oak tree with her husband, two sons, and a cat named Mouse. Momo Arashima Steals the Sword of the Wind is her first middle-grade novel and was inspired by the gods and monsters of her parents’ home country, Japan.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Books Inc.