Description

At twenty-two, Chicagoan Nadine Kenney is thrilled to meet her future husband, Jamie, while vacationing in Florida. After a whirlwind, long-distance romance, Nadine leaves her friends, family, and city to join Jamie in suburban Massachusetts. Once married, they begin trying for a baby without knowing how hard that road will become.
Nadine soon faces the little-known horrors of IVF when a procedure causes severe internal bleeding, and she wakes up from emergency surgery with a six-inch scar instead of a baby bump. In the difficult year that follows, anxiety and additional failed fertility treatments threaten her new marriage and her mental state. By some saving grace, she eventually becomes pregnant naturally, but the horrors are not over: her son is diagnosed with potentially terminal kidney complications. Ultimately, Nadine learns that in an unpredictable life, the only thing she can be sure of is the healing power of hope.

About the author(s)

Nadine Kenney Johnstone teaches English at Loyola University and received her MFA from Columbia College in Chicago. Her work has been featured in Chicago magazine, The Moth, PANK, and various anthologies, including The Magic of Memoir. She presents at writing conferences internationally and lives near Chicago with her family.

Reviews

2017 Chicago Writer's Association Book of the Year "Of This Much I'm Sure says it--the truths we keep secret. It goes there: messy and beautiful and complicated and terrifying and, ultimately, joyful. It's a story about fighting like hell. It's a story that is more necessary than ever before."
—Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way To Save Your Life

"Ultimately, Johnstone's is a story about the hard work of self-examination, the importance of forgiveness, and the power of hope to get us through."
—Katherine Ozment, author of Grace Without God

"Johnstone's candid, affecting memoir