Red Emma’s

Heineman beautifully captures the sharpness of the mind in the midst of catastrophe. She recounts her indescribable grief after delivering a stillborn son, her intimate bonding with the baby's body, and the impossible task of saying goodbye.

One in 115 pregnancies in the United States ends in stillbirth. As with Elizabeth McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, this silenced story of motherhood is urgent and necessary. Ghostbelly reveals the unexpected space we occupy when birth and death coincide, and our need to create our own rituals for grieving when they do.