KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!

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THE SHAPE OF WHAT REMAINS
Inspirational Spiritual Fiction
BY LISA C. TAYLOR

BLURB

A story about the choices one woman makes as she begins to heal from intractable grief.

Like all trauma, healing happens on its own timetable, often in surprising ways. Paralyzed by grief ten years after witnessing the violent death of her six-year-old daughter, Teresa Calvano turns to Chaucer, Janis Joplin, and a monthly book group to cope.

What did six-year-old Serena Calvano see that caused her to run in the road on a clear November morning while waiting for the school bus with her mother? Teresa Calvano has spent a decade blaming herself for Serena’s violent death and wishing it was her husband, Luke who was with Serena that day, so the guilt didn’t fall so heavily on her shoulders. When her husband and friends lose patience with her failure to get back to life, Teresa turns to books, therapy, and Janis Joplin to address her continued unraveling. Is there a cure for grief? In Teresa’s world, her research and life as a successful English professor fail to offer the one thing she most wants: another day with her six-year-old daughter.

“Like the impact the life of a parent has, the impact of a child’s death is unending. Teresa Calvano, protagonist of Lisa C. Taylor’s deeply moving novel, The Shape of What Remains, discovers that a parent’s grief has no outline, no edges, that it seeps into every aspect of life, every relationship, every encounter.” — Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House and Love & Fury

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THE SHAPE OF WHAT REMAINS
Inspirational Spiritual Fiction
BY LISA C. TAYLOR

Editorial Note: The novel’s premise contains subject matter that might be too sensitive for some readers. Please read the blurb before proceeding.

Excerpt

At first, there were pharmaceuticals, Prozac and Zoloft. Elevate those serotonin levels, chemicals to rearrange my brain after I retrieved a blood-spattered Dora the Explorer lunchbox from the road.

“I don’t like how the drugs make me feel,” I told Luke after I tapered off them.

His lips were a thin line. Wrong answer.

The problem was, I wanted the pain. It was my monument to Serena, better than the granite marker Luke put in our garden next to our yellow rose bush. Serena Joy Calvano, beloved sister and daughter. My grieving group said a physical marker would give me a place where I could sit and talk to her. I knew she wasn’t there, her ashes scattered in the ocean off Cape Cod on the boat ride we took ten summers ago. We moved that marker twice, always planting a yellow rose bush next to it since Serena loved roses and the color yellow.

Each day, I would set up a list for myself and promise to accomplish two things even if one of them was getting out of bed. I was trying to finish my book, but I would have gladly abandoned my papers and sworn off research for one more walk in the woods with her. Once we uncovered a robin’s nest with a cracked blue egg. When we picked it up, a little piece fell away. She carried that piece of eggshell in her pocket, wrapped in a Kleenex, and brought it to first grade.

For three months, I slept in her bed, clutched the stuffed monkey she held close every night. I inhaled her scent until it faded. One day, after returning home from a dental appointment, her bed was gone. The books on her white bookshelf, the lamp with cut out stars, and the purple curtains—all gone. The closet was empty of tiny dresses and shirts, and her white dresser that I had stenciled with stars, had disappeared.

“I took everything to Goodwill,” Luke said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but it’s been months, Teresa. You need to sleep in our bed.”

That never happened. I moved into the guest room, and when we relocated, I set up my own room that I pretended was like Serena’s room, except it wasn’t and never could be. The indentation that had remained in her bed sheets flattened and the sheets were washed before

Luke donated everything. There was no way to keep any part of her alive.

It’s been ten years and some days I still want to dive into the ocean that swallowed her ashes, the wind kicking up a gray cloud until the fine dust of my little girl dissipated in green waves. Luke, our son Wyatt, and I all held hands, swaying and slightly nauseous with the

tide. Luke read an excerpt from Winnie-the-Pooh, a better thing than some religious drivel about Serena being too good for this world or becoming God’s littlest angel. There will never be a reason for the pain that made a permanent home in my body, visiting me during a television commercial where a little girl is ecstatic that her mother is coping with seasonal allergies, or in the park when a child begs her father for ice cream, unaware that I am sitting on a nearby bench about to fall apart.

Luke never blamed me outright, but he asked didn’t you see the truck? I see it in my dreams. It is behind me in the grocery store, in back of the classroom when I teach. The truck is parked outside when I’m at my damn book group. Yes, I see the fucking truck. It won’t bring my

baby back. The driver didn’t even stop. A rabbit or a squirrel. I used to call her Bunny. Serena died on a perfect blue-sky morning in early November. Dried leaves and road dust. I’ll never have another child, and I’ll never love anyone as much as I loved Serena. Wyatt knows this.

Luke does too, though I pretend it’s my secret. He stopped brushing my hair, massaging my shoulders, and started staying late at the university.

When I spotted him in Delarosa’s Restaurant across from a glossy-haired woman, I kept on walking. Pretending is a game that younger couples play. I lost Serena on a day when fair weather clouds were bloated enough to block the sun. I will never be able to un-see the truck or her broken body in the road.

Two years after I lost Serena my mother-in-law, Bess, suggested a book group. “Stories, Teresa. You, of all people, understand the power of stories.”

Her book group met at the community center. The one I signed up for traveled to various bookstores, sometimes meeting up with a regional group.

“I’m no good with strangers,” I told Bess.

“That’s not true and you know it. You have a new group of students every semester. People who join book groups love to read. You’ll have that in common.”

I never thought of literature as a topic of discussion outside of class but since staying in my bathrobe until midday wasn’t working, I gave it a try. Eight years later, I’m still losing myself in tragedies I wish I’d written instead of lived.

About Author Lisa C. Taylor…

Links to Lisa’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:

Amazon Kindle: https://amzn.to/3DLfpRE

Amazon Paperback: https://amzn.to/3XU9VuC

CONNECT WITH LISA ONLINE
Official Website: LisaCTaylor.com
Facebook: /lisactaylor
Instagram: @lisac.taylor
Blue Sky: @lctaylor2

Happy Reading!

Thanks, Lisa, for sharing your book with us!

Don’t miss the chance to read this book!