#84 : I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl - Kelle Groom

Synopsis & Book Info:
At the age of fifteen, Kelle Groom found that alcohol allowed her to connect with people and explore intimacy in ways she’d never been able to experience before. She began drinking before class, often blacked out at bars, and fell into destructive relationships. At nineteen, already an out-of-control alcoholic, she was pregnant. Accepting the heartbreaking fact that she was incapable of taking care of her son herself, she gave him up for adoption to her aunt and uncle. They named him Tommy and took him home with them to Massachusetts. When he was nine months old, the boy was diagnosed with leukemia—but Kelle’s parents, wanting the best for her, kept her mostly in the dark about his health. When Tommy died he was only fourteen months old. Having lost him irretrievably, Kelle went into an accelerating downward spiral of self-destruction. She emerged from this free fall only when her desire to stop drinking connected her with those who helped her to get sober.
In stirring, hypnotic prose, I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl explores the most painful aspects of Kelle’s addiction and loss with unflinching honesty and bold determination. Urgent and vital, exquisite and raw, her story is as much about maternal love as it is about survival, as much about acceptance as it is about forgiveness. Kelle’s longing for her son remains twenty-five years after his death. It is an ache intensified, as she lost him twice—first to adoption and then to cancer. In this inspiring portrait of redemption, Kelle charts the journey that led her to accept her addiction and grief and to learn how to live in the world.
Through her family’s history and the story of her son’s cancer, Kelle traces with clarity and breathtaking grace the forces that shape a life, a death, and a literary voice.


Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 9781451616682
Purchase at Amazon

I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl Official Book Trailer from Ben Rock on Vimeo.

©2011


My Opinion:
What a story!
I know what it's like to be away from my child, not willingly, and it hurts. But mine came home. Kelle's didn't. I can't fathom the pain and sacrifice she endured.
The things she experienced were heart breaking, but you come to realize only the strong really do survive, and she is among them. And the loss of her child is only one thing in a sea of many.
A fantastic, emotional story, also a story that needs to be heard.


3.5/5


Recommend? Yes.


~I received a copy from Free Press. I was not compensated for my opinion.~