Unremarried Widow: A Memoir - Softcover

"Artis Henderson's extraordinary book takes its title from the dry, bureaucratic language of the military. But she invests that phrase with two kinds of soaring passion. One is the love story of herself and her husband Miles, opposites who attract with a chemistry that shimmers off the page. The other is the mourning story of her life after Miles's death and it is unsparing in its heartbreak. Together, the 'before' and 'after' of Henderson's life add up to an urgent act of witness, a saga of what the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have meant to that too-small portion of America that made and bore all the sacrifices."--Samuel G. Freedman, author of Breaking the Line and Who She Was

"Artis Henderson's remarkable memoir allows readers into the seldom-seen and unexpected world of the war widow. Henderson's eloquently rendered grief honors the soldiers lost and the resilient widows who carry on, all while she reassembles her life by pursuing a dream of writing."--Siobhan Fallon, author of You Know When the Men Are Gone

"Reading Unremarried Widow is like coming across an unexpectedly powerful monument in a cemetery--you stand there imagining someone else's story, and suddenly you realize that it's our story, that it connects us to something large and lasting, even as it separates us from an irreclaimable past."--Rhoda Janzen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

"With unflinching openness, Artis Henderson allows us into a world not often explored from the poignant perspective of the unremarried widow. Her personal journey of loss and love is deeply affecting in its honesty and humanity, and her straightforward style is deceptively profound, effective long after the last page is read."--Marian Fontana, New York Times bestselling author of A Widow's Walk

"When I picked up Artis Henderson's brave, beautiful memoir about the death of her husband in Iraq, I expected to be devastated, and I was. Unremarried Widow is an unwavering look at young love and young loss, the physicality of grief, and what it means to be left behind. What I didn't expect was to be inspired. Henderson's story is also one of strength--the strength it takes to fall in love, to let it go, to follow your passion, to move on."--Molly Birnbaum, author of Season to Taste

"Unremarried Widow is a beautifully crafted memoir of uncommon candor and power. Everyone should read this book for what it says about our profound capacity for love, and to remind us all of just how much we ask of those who serve in harm's way--and of the loved ones they leave behind."--Will Schwalbe, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Your Life Book Club

"Artis Henderson's Unremarried Widow is as engrossing as a good novel, but the story it tells is true and raw. In giving us an intimate, complex glimpse into the culture of military wives, and in writing about charged subjects--war, grief, gender, and our sometimes conflicting allegiances--with honesty and without judgment, she makes us witness to matters that touch all of our lives, whether we dare to acknowledge them or not."--Leah Hager Cohen, author of The Grief of Others

"Artis Henderson makes her debut with this poignant, deeply felt memoir about the death of her young solider-husband."--ChristianScienceMonitor.com

"Artis Henderson's grief becomes our gift in her piercingly beautiful memoir. . . . It is exceptional both because Henderson is a fine, spare and unsentimental writer--and because many if not most of us are never this close to the sorrow and upheaval a military loss brings."--The Buffalo News

"The book is a brave, unforgettable rendering of a young woman's difficult struggle to let go of one life and slowly embrace another. Not to mention the terrible, human cost of prolonged war."--Palm Beach Post (Book of the Month)

Artis Henderson is an award-winning journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Reader's Digest, Florida Weekly, and the online literary journal Common Ties. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a graduate degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism. She lives in New York.