Publication Date: February 18, 2025
Like all trauma, healing happens on its own timetable, often in surprising ways. Paralyzed by grief ten years after witnessing the violent death of her six-year-old daughter, Teresa Calvano turns to Chaucer, Janis Joplin, and a monthly book group to cope.
What did six-year-old Serena Calvano see that caused her to run in the road on a clear November morning while waiting for the school bus with her mother? Teresa Calvano has spent a decade blaming herself for Serena’s violent death and wishing it was her husband, Luke who was with Serena that day so the guilt didn’t fall so heavily on her shoulders. When her husband and friends lose patience with her failure to get back to life, Teresa turns to books, therapy, and Janis Joplin to address her continued unraveling. Is there a cure for grief? In Teresa’s world, her research and life as a successful English professor fail to offer the one thing she most wants: another day with her six-year-old daughter.
Tess Calvano has been locked in a haze of grief for the past decade after the tragic death of her young daughter.
Author Lisa C. Taylor delves into the complexities of grief in The Shape of What Remains. Locked into a routine of numbness, Tess grapples with a potentially philandering husband and a teen son as she tries to make sense of her life.
The storyline takes her through meeting with a psychiatrist who encourages her to embrace rather than reject memories. While Tess can’t have a second chance with Serena, that doesn’t mean she and Luke can’t start over.
From a trip to England to a focused effort to reclaim her life, Tess learns valuable lessons about processing grief.
The Shape of What Remains offers an intense look into a mother’s heart after the loss of a young child and the subsequent efforts to heal.
Lisa C. Taylor is the author of a novel, The Shape of What Remains, due out February 18, 2025. This novel tackles one woman’s journey back to life after the unexpected death of her child. The novel is listed in Kindle and available for pre-order now. She is also the author of a collection of poetry, Interrogation of Morning (2022), two short story collections, Impossibly Small Spaces (2018) and Growing a New Tail (2015) and two other collections of poetry, including Necessary Silence (2013, Arlen House/Syracuse University Press). Both her poetry and fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She’s been a finalist in many contests and recently won the Hugo House New Works Award for short fiction. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and anthologies including Tahoma Literary Review, Lily Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, MER VOX, Live Encounters, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Women’s Art Quarterly Journal, Crack the Spine Anthology, Worcester Review, Crannog, and Sky Island Journal. She was a January 2015 spotlight feature for the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) and was a mentor in their writer-to-writer program. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing as well as an MA. She teaches creative writing online and offers private workshops and mentoring.
