Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition

Imbued with longing, erudition, and hard-earned wisdom, Heartbroken dares to delve into the most universal of mortal ordeals--perhaps the one that makes us the most human of all. When Laura Pratt's long-distance partner of six years tells her “it's over” at a busy downtown train station, she is sent reeling, the breakup coming out of the blue. He, meanwhile, closes himself off, refusing to acknowledge Laura and her requests for explanation. In the following days, months, and then years, Laura struggles to make sense of this sudden end, alone and filled with questions. Seeking to understand the freefall that is heartbreak and how so many before her survived it, journalist Laura Pratt draws on forces across time and form and uncovers literary, philosophical, scientific, and psychological accounts of the mysterious alchemy of how we human beings fall in love in the first place, and why, when it ends, some of us take longer to get over it, or never do. She weaves this background of cultural history with her own bracing story of passionate love and its loss, and offers some light and hope for arriving--changed, broadened, grateful--on the other side.