Mira Ptacin's Poor Your Soul is an unblinking and moving literary memoir of grief and love by a talented young writer coming to terms with the multiple losses in her life.
At 28, Mira has just moved to New York to begin an MFA program in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. With her first semester behind her, she goes on a blind date with Andrew; three months later, she discovers she is pregnant. Five months later, as the couple's wedding approaches, she and Andrew learn that the baby has severe abnormalities and has no chance of survival outside the womb.
Poor Your Soul is not only the story of the loss of a pregnancy and of motherhood; it's intertwined with that of Mira's mother, Maria, who left Communist Poland as a young woman, and her younger brother Jules, who was killed in a drunk-driving accident at age 14. It's above all Mira's story of being the daughter of immigrants, trying to find her own way, suffering through a wayward adolescence, and carrying the burdens of family heartache and her own pervasive feelings of guilt.
Ptacin's narrative is episodic, weaving back and forth between her present and her remembered past. There are many lovely moments, like the evening of Mira and Andrew's first date, yet Mira is not interested in an idealized self-presentation. Raw pain is not likable, and Ptacin brings her grief to life.
In the end, Mira's very personal journey through grief is also a universal one. Poor Your Soul is a beautifully written celebration of the love of family and the healing that comes after loss. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer