Description
Set against the backdrop of a small-town Wisconsin NICU, a sweeping story of parenthood, family, and redemption
After a decade of miscarriages, Brooke Jensen is finally pregnant - with quadruplets. When she goes into labor after twenty-three weeks, Brooke and her husband rush to the hospital in the small town of Hanover, Wisconsin. For the 203 days that follow, they're plunged into the terrifying and mysterious netherworld of the neonatal intensive care unit.
As the babies grow and struggle, fall turns to stark upper-Midwest winter. Brooke bonds with Dash, a senior nurse whose son, Landon, had been a patient in the NICU years earlier and is now straining his parents' abilities to care for him. Both families bend and edge closer to breaking, and the questions mount: What does love look like? What does it mean to save a life?
A fiercely honest portrait of American parenthood, the American healthcare system, and Rust Belt communities, Everything We Could Do lays bare the ways that families are formed and remade in times of crisis.
About the Author
David McGlynn's previous books include the memoirs One Day You'll Thank Me and A Door in the Ocean, and the story collection, The End of the Straight and Narrow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Reviews
"Everything We Could Do shows us parental love in all its fierce, raw, at times irrational, all-consuming power. McGlynn shows us the fragility as well as the tenaciousness of life from its first moments, the omnipresence of joy alongside fear and grief. This is a meticulously well-researched, beautifully written novel and one of the most poignant portrayals of redemption I have ever read." - Margot Singer, author of Underground Fugue
Book Information
ISBN 9780810149175
Author David McGlynn
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Northwestern University Press
Publisher Northwestern University Press
After a decade of miscarriages, Brooke Jensen is finally pregnant - with quadruplets. When she goes into labor after twenty-three weeks, Brooke and her husband rush to the hospital in the small town of Hanover, Wisconsin. For the 203 days that follow, they're plunged into the terrifying and mysterious netherworld of the neonatal intensive care unit.
As the babies grow and struggle, fall turns to stark upper-Midwest winter. Brooke bonds with Dash, a senior nurse whose son, Landon, had been a patient in the NICU years earlier and is now straining his parents' abilities to care for him. Both families bend and edge closer to breaking, and the questions mount: What does love look like? What does it mean to save a life?
A fiercely honest portrait of American parenthood, the American healthcare system, and Rust Belt communities, Everything We Could Do lays bare the ways that families are formed and remade in times of crisis.
About the Author
David McGlynn's previous books include the memoirs One Day You'll Thank Me and A Door in the Ocean, and the story collection, The End of the Straight and Narrow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The American Scholar. He teaches at Lawrence University and lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
Reviews
"Everything We Could Do shows us parental love in all its fierce, raw, at times irrational, all-consuming power. McGlynn shows us the fragility as well as the tenaciousness of life from its first moments, the omnipresence of joy alongside fear and grief. This is a meticulously well-researched, beautifully written novel and one of the most poignant portrayals of redemption I have ever read." - Margot Singer, author of Underground Fugue
Book Information
ISBN 9780810149175
Author David McGlynn
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Northwestern University Press
Publisher Northwestern University Press
