Preserving Light

Preserving Light is more than a memoir. It is a multigenre journey of the human experience. Sometimes funny unfailingly honest it offers a unique examination of coping with loss disappointment and ambiguity.In Preserving Light author Gail Hartman uses the intimate and moving experience of her husbands illnesses and death as cause to reflect upon her life: from growing up in Manhattan -- including her adolescence sleeping above Lillian Hellman in the playwrights brownstone -- to holding jobs at the National Geographic Society the University of North Dakota and Minnesota Public Radio experiencing love and loss along the way. At the heart of it all is the story One Lucky Widow. In it she tells of her husbands last ten years leading to his death the deep love they had for one another and the unexpected richness that unfolded after he was gone as she began to live the life she had feared for so many years. For Hartman there is always the presence of light. She keeps it in a jar and saves it for those moments when the night is too long the day is too cold and the heart needs to be warmed.