The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir

Description

This book is about what it means to make a choice. As mothers, how do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact?

The Heart Folds Early is a story of transformation through tragedy, and an examination of the way in which great loss can make us simultaneously fearful and intrepid. Emerging from a childhood that included both devastating sexual abuse and the sustaining joy of being deeply (if imperfectly) loved, Jill Christman’s sights were set on building and protecting her own happy family–until her fiancé was killed in a car accident.

Christman folds the mournful recklessness of the young widow she was against the backdrop of her later marriage and new motherhood, including the choice to end a half-term pregnancy when a routine ultrasound revealed her baby boy had just half a heart. Courageous, clear-eyed, tender, and unexpectedly funny, Christman’s book reflects on her life and asks: What happens when we’re afraid the worst thing will happen and then, sometimes, it does? What does it mean to make and live with a heartrending choice? How do we carry life and death in our bodies and survive with our hearts intact?

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Jill Christman
Published: 03/01/2026
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9781496246790
Pages: 296
Weight: 0.77lbs
Size: 0.67″ H x 8.50″ L x 5.50″ W

About the Author

Jill Christman is the author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (Nebraska, 2022), Darkroom: A Family Exposure, and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Ball State University, where she serves as editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things.