Who was I in 2007?  At one point I was married, then I was married and pregnant, then I was widowed and pregnant, and then I was a widowed mother…my husband, Josh Taylor, died suddenly in an accident.  We had been married for exactly one and a half years.  Josh was 27 years old when he died.  I was 24.  I was also four months pregnant with our first child.  One month before Josh’s death, we found out we were having a boy. This book follows the seventeen months of my life following Josh’s death and concludes with the first birthday of our son. 

 

SIGNS OF LIFE is Natalie’s story of being a young married woman expecting her first child, to being a young pregnant widow, to being a young widowed mother with in-laws who refuse to leave her alone.  Ever. She discovers that when people say you marry the family, they really mean it, even if your husband is no longer alive. 

 

Her story follows the end of her pregnancy through her son’s first birthday as she tries to manage her grief over losing the only real man she ever knew, as she struggles in her role as a new mother where everyone is watching her for signs of impending collapse, and as she reconnects with her job teaching English at the local high school, where the books she’s teaching her students thematically connect with the new life that she’s trying to create.

 

NATALIE TAYLOR is a warrior- she’s honest, hilarious, resentful, and loving. She has a powerful voice that can be at turns like Haven Kimmel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Anne Lamott, or if provoked, Sylvia Plath. She’s a self-confessed book nerd who manages to gracefully weave together her experience with those of the characters whose lives she introduces to her students.

 

Materials available – Manuscript June 2010

Publication – April 2011

North America – Broadway Books

Author: Natalie Taylor

Add date: 2010-06-25