CLEAVE - Holly Pelesky
ABOUT THE BOOK
At 21, Holly Pelesky gets pregnant after her second time having sex. She decides to place her daughter up for adoption and then move far away from her fundamentalist Christian upbringing to start a new life. Cleave is a tight collection of epistolary creative nonfiction that examines the ambiguous grief of being a birth mother caught in the momentum of adulthood and the constant choices that come along with it. In these letters to the daughter she didn’t keep, Pelesky attempts to make peace with the decisions she’s made as a mother and those she's made as someone’s child. Full of hard realizations and tender moments, this book will break and mend your heart.
PRAISE FOR CLEAVE
“Adoptees might spend their lives wondering ‘Who Am I?’ but so do birth mothers who surrender their children. With unflinching honesty, Holly Pelesky considers the confounding nature of ‘love in absence’ that characterizes the relationship between her and the child she didn’t raise. Nuanced, compassionate, and fearless, Cleave confronts the complexity of the human heart.”
—Jody Keisner, author of Under My Bed and Other Essays
“In spare chapters that read like epistolary confessions to the daughter she placed up for adoption, Pelesky grapples with what it means to choose a life, a love. With sharp, lyrical sentences and the raw reveal of her prose, it is clear she lives her life the way she delivers lines on the page: with unflinching honesty and careful intention. CLEAVE is a masterful look into what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a wife—but most of all, how to fall in love with yourself.”
—Dina L. Relles, editor at Pidgeonholes
“Driven by a razor-sharp voice piping with insight, power, and grace; Pelesky's Cleave will empty the ashtray in your heart and replenish it with kisses and hard candies. You will put this book down only to come up for air!”
—Jessica Anne, author of A Manual for Nothing
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction, and poetry. She was once a homeschooled kid living in the suburbs of Seattle but has spent her adulthood in the Midwest, outgrowing her Fundamental upbringing. She received her MFA from the University of Nebraska. She works in a library, coaches slam poetry, and raises four boys with her partner in Omaha. Placing her daughter up for adoption will forever be the hardest thing she’s done.
BOOK INFO
Pub Date: Aug, 23, 2022
Print Length: 116 pages
Dimensions: 5 x 8 inches
ISBN: 978-1-957392-09-7
For a downloadable ebook, click here.