Light in Blue Shadows

by Edie Hartshorne

In times of crisis, loss and suffering, how can we continue to live with a clear mind and a peaceful heart? Can adversity offer unexpected gifts? In this spare, translucent memoir, Edie Hartshorne presents a collection of finely rendered vignettes that explore these questions. Through the tragic and unexpected loss of her eldest son, Edie is guided by music, spiritual exploration, and a sensitivity for nature to discover the hidden radiance of her own inner strength. Her transformational journey unfolds like a living work of art, inspiring us to remain open to kindness and compassion even in the midst of suffering. Within these delicately portrayed shadows of love and death, of joy and sorrow, shines a tender light of hope, wisdom and love.

Cover illustration by Nicholas Kirsten Honshin.

Genres: Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2007

Reviews

[Andria Kadell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This pearl of a novel encouraged tears and moments of heart swell, both, alongside many other complex feelings that felt lonely before reading them in someone else's story. What a beautiful and devastating autobiographical journey this author paints for anyone looking to accept the sting, the hollowness, and simultaneous joy of living and of death. Read if you have the courage and desire to be spiritually affected, your horizons expanded.

[Olivia Arrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were reasons I read the entire book even after it broke my heart a little. I had felt this connection to the loss when the author shared that her son died by his own hand. Then she fights to change the death certificate to "accident" and I felt crushed. Like it was yet another case of stigmatizing suicide and making us survivors of suicide feel more alienated than we already do. It was her writing that kept me reading this book to the end. She shares a lot of beautiful human connections and gorgeous descriptions of the natural world and travel, with bits of wisdom shining through.

[Lenny Husen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given to my colleague by the author and I found it on a shelf at work. Started to read and got into it immediately. Hard to review.
What is great: the poems, and descriptions of the lovely people that occupy (some with their presence felt even After Death) the author's life. I believe each person makes the Grief Journey of The First Year in his or her own unique way.
This is the author's story--and I believe her. It feels authentic to me. For her and her husband to heal, they needed to create a story about their son's death that would make it meaningful instead of senseless, and craft a tale that would place everyone in the family, including the decedent, in the best possible light. That's totally fine. We all should be as creative with the dreadful and demolishing things that happen to us.

Highest Praise: This book belongs on a shelf with The Year of Magical Thinking and other books on recovering after a Death of a Child or Spouse. It is quite good.
Edie seems like a truly gifted woman who has been extremely (EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY) lucky in every facet of her life with the exception of her son's tragic death at age 20.
I especially loved her incorporation of the poems, one of which I found especially personally meaningful. All the poems were excellent.

What I didn't like: Edie comes across as a good-hearted woman but also self-absorbed and a bit overly proud of her husband, friends, children, family members and especially herself. I am not saying that she doesn't have reason to have a huge ego--she does, and the people in her life are truly awe-inspiring. Everyone is incredibly talented (all professional musicians and other artists) and they are all geniuses. Her adopted daughter has a 14th birthday party, invites 13 other girls, and makes it a condition of the invitation that each of the guests has to prepare and perform or reveal an original song, dance, poem or painting. (At this point, I had to take a break from reading the book to go vomit).
Edie starts and ends the book by trumpeting about her wonderful, enduring and supportive friendships, making it clear that she is deserving of having such kind companions who love her so dearly and give her the attention, gifts and sympathy that she craves. For some reason, I found that irritating and distasteful, to me personally.
I guess it would be like reading about someone crowing repeatedly about how much gourmet delicious healthful food one has and all the free chefs who come and prepare it three times a day for free--when you yourself have known starvation and are still just getting barely enough nourishment to survive--and even that only from what you are able to grow in your own garden.
But my silly and overly personal annoyance aside--Edie is gifted, intelligent, spiritual, energetic, and a wonderful, devoted, fantastic mother, daughter, wife, author, musician and friend--just ask her.

Worst criticism I have for this book: It is just a wee bit too Berkeley.

[Raquel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir about a mother whose son dies suddenly is proof that you can get blurbs from the most notable names that are just not deserved; clearly, who you know can get you places. I feel for this author; grief over a lost loved one is hard. But the book was so self-indulgent and felt like reading her journal entries; I felt secondhand embarrassment reading this book. Her life is so privileged that the instances when she encounters true suffering by others feel almost laughable by comparison. She clearly thinks highly of herself and her loved ones and can't, as a result, show us their humanity in all its dimensions; as a result, everyone in the book feels flat and it was hard to feel anything about any of them.

So much is skimmed over that it feels flimsy and hard to really grasp onto this anywhere.

I have read grief memoirs and books on grief that have felt like gifts from the authors in times when my own heart has felt broken. This book was self-indulgent, poorly written rambles and I felt no connection with the writer or the people she wrote about.

[Nadia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focuses on the emotional and not the how-to. Beautiful prose.