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WORK TITLE: The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards
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WEBSITE: https://www.jessicawaite.work/
CITY: Calgary
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COUNTRY: Canada
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PERSONAL
Married; husband’s name Sean.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Essayist and writer. Has worked as an English teacher in Japan in the mid-1990s.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Jessica Waite is an essayist and writer. She met her husband while they were both working as English teachers in Japan in the mid-1990s. Twenty years into their marriage, he passed away from a heart attack, leaving Waite with a plethora of emotions after coming to terms with some of the darker sides of him and their marriage.
The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards: A Memoir is Waite’s reflections on her marriage after the death of her husband, Sean, at age forty-seven. Waite covers a range of emotions, including her anger and grief, not only over his death but also because of the secrets she found out about him posthumously. She learned of his drug use, extensive credit card debt, and infidelity. Waite discusses the challenges of dealing with problems that were exacerbated by Sean’s bipolar disorder, OCD, depression, and even manic episodes. Waite admitted that her relationship was rocky with her husband, which led to complicated emotions through her grieving stage after his heart attack. She attended Widow Camp, grief counselling, and worked with a death doula to cope. Waite eventually started to think he was trying to contact her from beyond the grave.
A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that Waite writes “with startling compassion and surprising wit.” The same Publishers Weekly contributor concluded by saying that “this stirring study of loss and forgiveness isn’t easily forgotten.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews found The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards to be “a candid, raw chronicle of bereavement.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 2024, review of The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards: A Memoir.
Publishers Weekly, May 20, 2024, Stacy Kondle, review of The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards, p. 56.
ONLINE
Jessica Waite website, https://www.storymourning.com (August 10, 2024).
Rights Factory website, https://www.therightsfactory.com/ (August 10, 2024), author profile.
Represented by:
Stacey Kondla
Author Website:
https://www.jessicawaite.work/
Hi. I'm Jessica.
Maybe things are as complicated for you as they were for me. Maybe your person hurt you and you feel angry, betrayed or rejected sometimes.
Maybe you feel like you failed your loved one somehow. Guilt and regret can show up.
I've been there.
In my own journey I've discovered gentle and effective ways of moving through the complexity of grief. They've helped me integrate my sorrow. They've helped me laugh at the utter absurdity of things. They've me helped turn despair into meaning.
Your grief experience is a sacred rite of passage. It's all yours — even if you seek guidance and companionship along the way.
Having the right support can help. I've worked as a teacher, caregiver and coach. Now, I help mentor people to heal through writing.
As a fellow griever...
I know that hope shows up when you feel safe and seen. Fear and loneliness can kneecap you when you don't.
As a writer...
I know that the story you tell —even the one inside your head— impacts your whole world. You can't always control your circumstances, but you make your story.
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Deepen healing by "gentling" the grief process
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Tap into the creative force that generates new life from death
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See old patterns and discover greater compassion for yourself
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Sift the rubble and find treasures forged just for you
Waite, Jessica THE WIDOW'S GUIDE TO DEAD BASTARDS Atria (NonFiction None) $29.99 7, 30 ISBN: 9781668044858
A complex memoir about mourning, mental illness, and shocking revelations.
In her debut, fueled with anger and grief, Waite recounts her husband's sudden death from a heart attack at age 47; her stunned discovery of his secret past of infidelity, drug use, and credit card debt; and their marriage, which was roiled by the recurring symptoms of his bipolar disorder. Sean had struggled with manic episodes, depression, and OCD, but his symptoms, rather than appearing in long cycles, were "rapid-cycling," seeming more like unpredictable mood swings than an illness that required medical intervention. Without therapy and medication for Sean, she and their son were at the mercy of his volatile eruptions, which sometimes left her wondering if the marriage could last. Waite acknowledges the complexities of grieving when the relationship had been so rocky and after discovering that the husband she loved betrayed her with prostitutes, affairs, and an addiction to online pornography. She sought help from a therapist and grief counselors, went to Camp Widow, met with a death doula and a psychic, and tried drum circling, art journaling, shamanic healing, yoga, and massage, all in an effort "to recalibrate to my new reality." Grieving was complicated, as well, by recurrences of "unusual-seeming" encounters that convinced her that Sean was trying to contact her from the beyond: lightbulbs in her house burned out; in the library, suddenly feeling faint, she saw through blurred vision only one book, whose plot exactly mirrored her life at that moment. "I wasn't the only member of the Waite clan whose television turned on by itself," she admits, "nor the only one whose 'normal life' was interrupted by unexplainable phenomena." Other mourners, she suggests, may find solace in the uncanny possibility of a "reciprocal nurturing relationship between the living and the dead."
A candid, raw chronicle of bereavement.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Waite, Jessica: THE WIDOW'S GUIDE TO DEAD BASTARDS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 June 2024, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A797463152/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=f2684622. Accessed 12 July 2024.
The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards: A Memoir
Jessica Waite. Atria, $29.99 (320p) ISBN 978-1-6680-4485-8
Essayist Waite discusses her husband's death and the secrets she unearthed after he was gone in this bracing debut. In 1995, a 22-year-old Waite met and fell for Sean while they were both teaching English in Japan. They married and spent 20 years cycling between good days and rough patches, owing in part to jobs that required frequent travel and Sean's bipolar disorder. In 2015, Sean died of a heart attack, and as Waite combed through his belongings, she made some rattling discoveries: Sean kept massive stores of digital pornography, hoarded cannabis despite insisting he didn't use it, carried on multiple affairs, and lied about the couple's finances. Reeling, Waite threw herself into writing and grief support groups. Eventually, she came to a fragile acceptance of her husband's messy humanity. "What if the function of grief... is to guide human beings to a deeper understanding of the nature of life," Waite asks. With startling compassion and surprising wit ("I'm looking at nine vaginas at the same time... laid out in a three-by-three grid, like the Brady Bunch family," she writes of finding Sean's porn stash), Waite shows how such an understanding might be achieved. This stirring study of loss and forgiveness isn't easily forgotten. Agent: Stacy Kondle, Rights Factory. (July)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Kondle, Stacy. "The Widow's Guide to Dead Bastards: A Memoir." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 20, 20 May 2024, p. 56. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A799270674/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5d365fa5. Accessed 12 July 2024.