Shadow Child

Shadow Child cover002

” I stand in the dark hall and then grief begins. I can’t go into the room. I can’t open the door. I think that if I keep the door shut, the pain will subside and then the baby, still and always a dream, will sail loose like the fairy on the swallow and take my grief with  him.”

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From Shadow Child’s cover: “A perceptive and moving meditation on the spiritual lessons of nature and the power of love to overcome despair, Shadow Child is the story of a mother coming to terms with the stillbirth of her first child. Beth Powning explores selfhood, parenthood and the creative impulse, and the way life hones, pares and humbles each of us.”


National Post: “Haunting…intimate, generous, but never confessional, Powning, in shimmering prose, comes to understand love and loss…There is so much here, a celebration of selfhood, grief and renewal, and the spiritual solace of nature.”

Kirkus Reviews: “Powning tells the story with incantatory grace…with an anguish that is rattling…life, captured here in all its keenness.”

Library Journal: “Superbly written…Powning skillfully chronicles her personal metamorphosis as she learns to accept herself and penetrates the complexities of relationships in family and community.”

The Gazette: “Eloquent…an unflinching eye for detail…Shadow Child is about more than a tragic personal loss; it manages somehow to be about all losses, the painful and inevitable letting go that makes us human…”

The Toronto Sun: “An honest and intensely felt book.”