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Your Hearts, Your Scars
Engaging, funny, and unflinching essays about coming of age as a transplant patient and living each day as a gift
Adina Talve-Goodman was born with a congenital heart condition and survived multiple operations over the course of her childhood, including a heart transplant at age nineteen. In these seven essays, she tells the story of her chronic illness and her youthful search for love and meaning, never forgetting that her adult life is tied to the loss of another person—the donor of her transplanted heart.
Whether writing about the experience of taking her old heart home from the hospital (and passing it around the Thanksgiving table), a summer camp for young transplant patients, or a memorable night on the town, Talve-Goodman’s writing is filled with curiosity, humor, and compassion. Published posthumously, Your Hearts, Your Scars is the work of a writer wise beyond her years, a moving reflection on chance and gratitude, and a testament to hope and kindness.
Adina Talve-Goodman was born with a congenital heart condition and survived multiple operations over the course of her childhood, including a heart transplant at age nineteen. In these seven essays, she tells the story of her chronic illness and her youthful search for love and meaning, never forgetting that her adult life is tied to the loss of another person—the donor of her transplanted heart.
Whether writing about the experience of taking her old heart home from the hospital (and passing it around the Thanksgiving table), a summer camp for young transplant patients, or a memorable night on the town, Talve-Goodman’s writing is filled with curiosity, humor, and compassion. Published posthumously, Your Hearts, Your Scars is the work of a writer wise beyond her years, a moving reflection on chance and gratitude, and a testament to hope and kindness.
144 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 24, 2023
15 people are currently reading
367 people want to read
About the author
Adina Talve-Goodman
1 book7 followersAdina Talve-Goodman was born on December 12th, 1986. She was raised in St. Louis by her parents, Rabbi James Stone Goodman and Rabbi Susan A. Talve, along with her sister, Sarika Stone Talve-Goodman and her brother, Jacob Talve-Goodman. She attended Clayton High School and Washington University, where she studied performance studies, as well as women, gender, and sexuality studies. She became a well-known actress in the local theater scene, a Star Clown in an Italian clown school, played King Lear at the London Globe, and started seriously pursuing creative writing. During this time, at 19 years old, Adina received a heart transplant, due to a congenital heart condition, and began writing about it. After moving to Brooklyn in 2010, she joined the staff of the celebrated literary magazine One Story, and over the next six years Adina poured her energy and enthusiasm into advocating for emerging writers, becoming a much-beloved member of the New York literary community. In 2015, she won the Bellevue Literary Review’s Non-Fiction Prize with her essay, “I Must Have Been That Man,” and in 2016 she began her MFA at the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. She was working on her first book when she was diagnosed with cancer. Adina passed away on January 12th, 2018.
Adina’s collection of essays, Your Hearts, Your Scars, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in January 2023. To read it is to hear her voice. We were so lucky to know her.
Adina’s collection of essays, Your Hearts, Your Scars, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in January 2023. To read it is to hear her voice. We were so lucky to know her.
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December 6, 2023I read this as part of a narrative medicine workshop I attended. I really do not feel like it’s fair to give a star rating to a posthumously published collection of essays.
There were parts of this that made me laugh out loud, parts that left me with wonder and parts that made me feel so much empathy for her. Adina’s voice is so clear and unique and throughout the book I felt like she was sitting with me in a room and telling a story or even at times trying out a stand up set. I liked it and I’m glad I read it.
There were parts of this that made me laugh out loud, parts that left me with wonder and parts that made me feel so much empathy for her. Adina’s voice is so clear and unique and throughout the book I felt like she was sitting with me in a room and telling a story or even at times trying out a stand up set. I liked it and I’m glad I read it.
February 2, 2023
Adina Talve-Goodman (1986-2018) was born with several congenital malformations, the most significant being a critical congenital heart defect, as her heart had only one ventricle (pumping chamber) instead of two, and blood could not flow from her heart to her lungs, a condition known as pulmonary atresia. As this is a lethal malformation she underwent surgical corrections at one and six days of age, which saved her life but could not permanently correct her deformed heart. She went into heart failure at the age of 12, went on the transplant list at 17, and underwent a heart transplant at 19, which allowed her to live a nearly normal life. She did have to take several immunosuppressant medications to keep her body’s immune system from rejecting her new heart, but tragically she developed a type of lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells, a known complication of long-term use of immunosuppressive agents that ultimately claimed her life shortly after her 31st birthday.
Adina Talve-Goodman was also the daughter of rabbis, who was born in St. Louis, attended Washington University in her home town, and was a noted local actress, a talented writer and a supporter of up and coming ones, and a beautiful and ebullient young woman who lived a rich and meaningful life, laughed often, loved fiercely, and enriched and touched the lives of practically everyone she encountered, whether family members, friends, classmates or strangers. Her favorite author was James Baldwin, and a quote from his novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone served as one that she treasured and embodied:
"For the very first time, the very first time, I realized the fabulous extent of my luck: I could, I could, if I kept the faith, transform my sorrow into life and joy. I might live in pain and sorrow forever, but, if I kept the faith, I could do for others what I felt had not been done for me, and if I could do that, if I could give, I could live."
Your Hearts, Your Scars is a collection of seven personal essays that Adina wrote towards the end of her life. She describes her life as a chronically ill young woman, her practically overnight transformation to a nearly normal person after her transplant, and the complex emotions she experienced knowing that her life depended on the premature death of the young person whose heart she carried within her. She describes the arduous process of getting a precious transplanted organ and how close to death one has to come to obtain one, how her illness and physical scars affect how she views her body and how others, particularly her lovers, treat her, and how the gift of life she received impacted her feelings of responsibility to the donor, as well as to others in need of help. Through her words this reader learned more about the daily life of a chronically ill child and young person, and how much many people like her embrace and value life even more than those who are not afflicted with chronic illness.
Your Hearts, Your Scars is, like the author, full of laughter and love, and her joie de vivre jumps off the page and made me appreciate all that I have been given. It gave me a sense of who she was, and how much her tragic death must have impacted those around her. It was a very touching and unforgettable book, and one that I could not recommend any more highly.
Thank you to Bellevue Literary Press and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program for providing me with an uncorrected proof of this book in exchange for an honest review of it.
Adina Talve-Goodman was also the daughter of rabbis, who was born in St. Louis, attended Washington University in her home town, and was a noted local actress, a talented writer and a supporter of up and coming ones, and a beautiful and ebullient young woman who lived a rich and meaningful life, laughed often, loved fiercely, and enriched and touched the lives of practically everyone she encountered, whether family members, friends, classmates or strangers. Her favorite author was James Baldwin, and a quote from his novel Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone served as one that she treasured and embodied:
"For the very first time, the very first time, I realized the fabulous extent of my luck: I could, I could, if I kept the faith, transform my sorrow into life and joy. I might live in pain and sorrow forever, but, if I kept the faith, I could do for others what I felt had not been done for me, and if I could do that, if I could give, I could live."
Your Hearts, Your Scars is a collection of seven personal essays that Adina wrote towards the end of her life. She describes her life as a chronically ill young woman, her practically overnight transformation to a nearly normal person after her transplant, and the complex emotions she experienced knowing that her life depended on the premature death of the young person whose heart she carried within her. She describes the arduous process of getting a precious transplanted organ and how close to death one has to come to obtain one, how her illness and physical scars affect how she views her body and how others, particularly her lovers, treat her, and how the gift of life she received impacted her feelings of responsibility to the donor, as well as to others in need of help. Through her words this reader learned more about the daily life of a chronically ill child and young person, and how much many people like her embrace and value life even more than those who are not afflicted with chronic illness.
Your Hearts, Your Scars is, like the author, full of laughter and love, and her joie de vivre jumps off the page and made me appreciate all that I have been given. It gave me a sense of who she was, and how much her tragic death must have impacted those around her. It was a very touching and unforgettable book, and one that I could not recommend any more highly.
Thank you to Bellevue Literary Press and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program for providing me with an uncorrected proof of this book in exchange for an honest review of it.
March 1, 2024
This tiny book punches well above its weight class. It's a story of the human heart, both physically and metaphorically. You can read this collection of essays in a single day, but the author's enormous talent might just stay with you long after that. And the feeling is quite beautiful. Highest recommend.
January 12, 2023
Beautiful memoir
Perspective of someone’s life before and after heart transplant
Perspective of someone’s life before and after heart transplant
May 27, 2023
I couldn’t put it down. Heartbreaking and inspiring.
August 3, 2023
Such a tragedy this author never got to write more. She had such Grace and wisdom in her very short life.
December 14, 2025
Beautifully written, thoughtful and funny essays about illness and humanity. This is not a book about death. Worth reading multiple times.
August 11, 2023
This essay collection was published by a group of friends and the sister of Adina Talve-Goodman, after her unexpected death from a rare, cancerous reaction to her transplanted heart. It is a collection of essays that the author had hoped to published at some point in her later life.
These essays are written in a way that is so open to sharing, with mundane details about being a young woman, being in love, being unused to being healthy after a childhood of heart failure and two years waiting for a heart transplant. Thereby these essays give a truthful, vulnerable and frankly beautifully written insight into who Adina Talve-Goodman was and what her words could do. She is such a skilled craftswoman with her words, I loved reading this!
Inserting some brief self reflection:
As an able bodied person, this book also reminded me of what I learnt from Keah Brown in The Pretty One; that dignity is more important than pity.
-
Some of my favourite ways she uses her words:
„Doctors often explained my illness to me using sports metaphors--as if, as a kid born with a single-ventricle heart, sports was a language I ever learned to speak.“
„I wanted to explain to him that I wasn't good at much, but I was good at waiting. How I had waited nearly two years for a heart, and a year ago, I had come so close to death that sometimes I worry the smell of it lingers on my body and maybe that's the reason I buy so many clothes and creams.“
„You wonder still, but now ten years after the surgery and not in love--you also wonder whether you lost that first love to your wellness.“
„I called my mother in terror, crying uncontrollably that it was all over, the transplant had failed, and I was once again dying. I think you have a cold, she said. I think you're regular-people sick.“
„I was twenty-one; no one had ever written me songs before or called me a zombie. I didn't know how to have a conversation about what it might mean.“
„I smile and make jokes in these situations because I think that people, doctors, are more likely to want to keep funny people alive.“
„I STOOD NEXT TO A MAN at a bar with a four dollar beer in one hand, my coat in the other, and no good way to grab my pills at 10:00 P.M. I'd spent a lot of nights at bars that week and I'dmissed my 10:00 p.M. deadline more than once. It's the easiest thing, the only thing I have to do, really, to stay alive just take the pills at the same time every morning and every night in order to have the perfect amount of medicine in my system so that my body doesn't suddenly wake up and say, Fuck this heart, rip it up, it doesn't belong. And still, sometimes, I forget, I slip up, I'm late.“
„I thanked her for asking. It is nice to have a friend who holds my secrets like they are her secrets, too.“
„Transplant aside, I was like every other upper-middle-class white female riding this gentrification train back to Brooklyn.“
„With wellness, I suddenly had so much to waste. I could waste my time, my body, my heart on anything“
„I asked him if it was okay to sometimes smoke cigarettes in Vermont with my boyfriend, if I couldn't do that anymore when the new heart came because it wouldn't be mine to destroy, the way this one was.““
These essays are written in a way that is so open to sharing, with mundane details about being a young woman, being in love, being unused to being healthy after a childhood of heart failure and two years waiting for a heart transplant. Thereby these essays give a truthful, vulnerable and frankly beautifully written insight into who Adina Talve-Goodman was and what her words could do. She is such a skilled craftswoman with her words, I loved reading this!
Inserting some brief self reflection:
As an able bodied person, this book also reminded me of what I learnt from Keah Brown in The Pretty One; that dignity is more important than pity.
-
Some of my favourite ways she uses her words:
„Doctors often explained my illness to me using sports metaphors--as if, as a kid born with a single-ventricle heart, sports was a language I ever learned to speak.“
„I wanted to explain to him that I wasn't good at much, but I was good at waiting. How I had waited nearly two years for a heart, and a year ago, I had come so close to death that sometimes I worry the smell of it lingers on my body and maybe that's the reason I buy so many clothes and creams.“
„You wonder still, but now ten years after the surgery and not in love--you also wonder whether you lost that first love to your wellness.“
„I called my mother in terror, crying uncontrollably that it was all over, the transplant had failed, and I was once again dying. I think you have a cold, she said. I think you're regular-people sick.“
„I was twenty-one; no one had ever written me songs before or called me a zombie. I didn't know how to have a conversation about what it might mean.“
„I smile and make jokes in these situations because I think that people, doctors, are more likely to want to keep funny people alive.“
„I STOOD NEXT TO A MAN at a bar with a four dollar beer in one hand, my coat in the other, and no good way to grab my pills at 10:00 P.M. I'd spent a lot of nights at bars that week and I'dmissed my 10:00 p.M. deadline more than once. It's the easiest thing, the only thing I have to do, really, to stay alive just take the pills at the same time every morning and every night in order to have the perfect amount of medicine in my system so that my body doesn't suddenly wake up and say, Fuck this heart, rip it up, it doesn't belong. And still, sometimes, I forget, I slip up, I'm late.“
„I thanked her for asking. It is nice to have a friend who holds my secrets like they are her secrets, too.“
„Transplant aside, I was like every other upper-middle-class white female riding this gentrification train back to Brooklyn.“
„With wellness, I suddenly had so much to waste. I could waste my time, my body, my heart on anything“
„I asked him if it was okay to sometimes smoke cigarettes in Vermont with my boyfriend, if I couldn't do that anymore when the new heart came because it wouldn't be mine to destroy, the way this one was.““
January 14, 2024
Such a poignant book. Such a tender, powerful, heartbreaking narrative. So many great lines and details about the realities of life and also of death. And what it means to be grateful, to feel healthy and also live with illness. Wish Adina had been able to write more--am glad this book exists. Thanks to Bellevue Literary Press for publishing it.
February 10, 2023
One of the most beautiful and powerful books I’ve ever read. Also an easy short read. I wanted it to last longer. I’ll be buying many of these to give to friends and family. Thank you Adina and thank you to Adina’s family and friends for sharing this with the world.
September 3, 2023
Adina writes in a compelling and visceral style about her experiences as a heart transplant recipient through a series of very personal vignettes and short stories. Provides an interesting introduction for me to the concept of embodied difference.
December 11, 2023
To read a posthumous collection is always difficult. The idea that this talented, young person has died just covers the whole experience with a sad overlay. Through this slight collection, I can feel the pain of those who loved her and their desire to immortalize her.
February 17, 2023
An emotional and bitterwsweet taste of the powerful writing Adina would have brought into the world, if only her heart had let her.
August 27, 2023
I read Your Hearts, Your Scars with one eye laughing and one eye crying (sometimes both eyes crying). A beautiful, moving, series of essays exploring Adina's inner world and experiences.
March 1, 2025
Came here from Beautyland, what a double whammy of Adina!
March 3, 2023
This is a collection of seven essays published after Adina Talve-Goodman's death. At 19 she had a heart transplant and these beautifully written pieces reflect on her chronic illness, what it means to have someone's else's heart inside her, her relationships with men and how they viewed her scars - literal and metaphorical, and what it means to be no longer ill (for a while at least). Honest and searingly written, it is clear that Talve-Goodman would have gone on to even greater writing if she had lived.
April 13, 2023
Loved it!!
July 1, 2023
first read: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
September 3, 2023
Moving autobiographical book about living with heart failure. A very vivacious fun loving girl. Sad she didn’t have log
July 7, 2025
Around 140 pages and every single page made me wish I’d known this person. Her introspection on living with heart failure and then heart transplant is fascinating and beautiful.
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November 23, 2025oh man i am in love w her:,,
May 7, 2025
really good short read
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews