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Purchase the book here: Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers (Paperback)

Planet Claire is the story of the untimely death of the author's wife and his candid account of the following year of madness and grief. As his life unravels, Porter analyzes his sadness with growing interest. He talks to Claire as if to evoke a presence, to mark a space for memory. He reports on his daily walks and shares observations of life's sadness, while reminiscing about various moments in their life together. Like Orpheus, the author searches for a lost love, and what he finds is not the dog of doom but flashes of an intimate symmetry that brighten the darkest places of sorrow."--Provided by publisher.

JEFF PORTER is the author of Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling, the memoir Oppenheimer Is Watching Me, and co editor of Understanding the Essay. His essays and articles have appeared in several magazines and literary reviews, including the Antioch Review, Northwest Review, Shenandoah, Missouri Review, Hotel Amerika, Wilson Quarterly, Contemporary Literature, and the Seneca Review. For the better part of his career, he taught English at the University of Iowa. He loves cameras, dogs, and guitars--though not in that order. He splits his time between Milwaukee and Tucson. His latest work is Planet Claire: Suite for Cello and Sad-Eyed Lovers. For more information visit, www.jeff-porter.com.

The second installment in Ann Hood's Gracie Belle imprint challenges the traditional solemnity that characterizes nonfiction books of grief, loss, and sorrow.

"Few readers will fail to be gripped by this tragically common story about death and what comes after for those left behind...A haunting and thought-provoking consideration of death and 'how utterly it rips apart our lives.'

--Kirkus Reviews, Starred review