Heartwood The Art of Living with the End in Mind

The modern world is uncomfortable with death, but when we turn away from our mortality, we also cast aside what it can teach us. In her candid memoir, award-winning author Barbara Becker eloquently addresses this most inevitable part of life.

When her oldest childhood friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer and living out her last year, Barbara embarked on a quest to write about how to live with an accepting awareness of death. Through remarkable honesty and lyrical storytelling, Barbara shows us that there are life-giving lessons in death and that grief itself is a pathway to healing, love, and enduring strength. She weaves a deeply personal narrative of end-of-life stories drawn from her own family, her experiences as an international human-rights advocate, and her work as a hospice volunteer at New York City's Bellevue Hospital. Along the way, we encounter extraordinary people and truths revealed at the place where life and death meet.

A compassionate gift for anyone living with loss, this chronicle invites us to experience a new and unguarded relationship with the dying, the dead, and death itself. Printed in the United States.

"In Heartwood, Barbara Becker inspires us to follow our curiosity into a world of love and loss that is both universal and a source of our uniqueness. And what could be better than that?"
-Gloria Steinem, bestselling author and activist