If There Are Any Heavens Hardcover by Nicholas Montemarano

Product Details

• Publisher: Persea Books (2022-07-19)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 0 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780892555574
• Item Weight: 260.82 grams
• Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.65 cm

Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists categorization: it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song.

On January 6, 2021, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in America, while the U.S. Capitol is under attack, Nicholas Montemarano drives six hundred miles to see his mother, who is hospitalized with COVID pneumonia and in a critical state. For ten days he lives in a hotel minutes from the hospital, alternating between hope and helplessness. This is the story of those ten days. It is the story of the pandemic told through the intimate prism of one family’s loss.  

Written with visceral urgency in the earliest days of grief, If There Are Any Heavens resists categorization: it is a memoir, a poem, a mournful but loving song. Its form asks readers to slow down and breathe between each broken line. At other moments, a chorus of voices—anti-maskers, COVID-deniers, and doctors—causes the reader to become breathless. It is an almost real-time account of the anxiety, uncertainty, and sorrow brought on by this pandemic. It is also, finally, a devastating homage to a family’s love in a time of great loss.  

Now, and many years from now, when people want to understand the personal cost of the COVID-19 pandemic, they will turn to this intimate and spare elegy from a son to his mother.

About the Author

Nicholas Montemarano is the author of three novels and a short story collection. His stories have appeared in Esquire, Zoetrope, Tin House, The Southern Review, and many other publications. His writing has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Alumni Professor of Creative Writing and Belles Lettres at Franklin & Marshall College.