The Lost Season: A Memoir of Infertility, Motherhood, and the Worry and Work Demanded of Women

by Stacey May Fowles

The bestselling author of Baseball Life Advice, Stacey May Fowles returns with the honesty, humour, and heart that readers love in a memoir exploring infertility, motherhood, mental health, and the work demanded of women.

After years of struggling with the pain of infertility, Stacey May Fowles had her beautiful daughter. But while motherhood brought with it many joys, it also meant losing so much of what had gotten her through those years of wanting. With her characteristic introspection, Stacey May explores what it means to create life with a traumatized body, the sometimes uncomfortable fit of wearing both motherhood and ambition, and the ways in which our ideas of how a mother moves through the world limit and hurt us—and often sever our connections to one another. 

The follow up to Baseball Life Advice, a Globe and Mail and National Post best book, The Lost Season is a raw, powerful exploration of undoing and becoming.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

204 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 9, 2026

About the author

Stacey May Fowles is is an award-winning novelist, journalist, and essayist. She has written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Torontoist, the National Post, Deadspin, Hazlitt, and Vice Sports, among others. Her most recent book, Baseball Life Advice, was published in spring 2017. She lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[Chenoa Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone going through infertility, I picked up this book expecting it to be a lot more about that phase of her life. For folks like me: prepare for a beautiful story but one that primarily centres a woman’s postpartum journey. She—deliberately or otherwise—says relatively little about that time of infertility (which, at 4 years in her late 30s, is not insignificant). I felt this absence to be a bit of a shame. But, again, as someone going through it, I can sense the author protecting that part of herself; as she alludes to, it was a much harder and sadder time in her life than postpartum in many ways, despite new motherhood’s own unique challenges. All that said, it was a wonderful read and I honestly hope everyone, including (especially!) men, reads this. I still felt seen in the parts of her infertility journey that she does discuss, and I can see my friends who are mothers in other aspects of the book. I can see ALL of us in her discussions about identity, labour, and societal expectations of women.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful book about infertility, early motherhood and the work and worry of motherhood. I like Stacey May's writing because it is always open, honest and true. This personal story will resonate with many women (even those like me who don't have children). This book gave me a lot of food for thought. Even as a woman who has never tried to have children, I could relate to the depression and anxiety, rebuilding your life, dealing with trauma, and being forever changed after.

The writer's drought part also resonated with me.

I hope a lot of people read this.

[Jenna Salsedo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I went into The Lost Season expecting a story centered on infertility, but found something much richer. It offers an honest, nuanced look at the journey into motherhood—from trying to conceive to pregnancy and beyond—focusing less on the day-to-day realities of raising children and more on the evolving sense of identity, loss, and rediscovery. As someone who isn’t a mother yet, I found it to be a thoughtful and illuminating glimpse into a stage of life I haven’t experienced.

[Lottie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

Short, but definitely packed an emotional punch