this lovely life

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie at twenty-three weeks gestation and weighing just a pound at birth.  During the delivery, she begged the doctors to “let her babies go”–she knew all too well that at twenty three weeks they could very well die, and if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just four days later; her son survived and was indeed multiply-disabled.

Winner of the PEN Center Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference Bakeless Prize in Creative Nonfiction, This Lovely Life tells, with brilliant intensity, of what became of the Forman family after the birth of the twins–the harrowing medical interventions, ethical considerations involving the sanctity of life and death.  In the end, the long-delayed first steps of a five-year-old child will seem like the fist-pumping stuff of a triumph narrative.  Forman’s intelligent voice gives a sensitive, nuanced rendering of her guilt, her anger, and her eventual acceptance in this portrait of a mother’s fierce love for her children.