Get Body and Soul: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Healing PDF

In physique and Soul: A Memoir of affection, Loss, and therapeutic, biographer Panthea Reid tells the tale of her love affair along with her husband, John Fischer, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Jonathan quick pupil. till John’s surprising demise in 2015, they shared a four-decades-long love affair and literary partnership. physique and Soul unveils their deep romantic bond that begun within the halls of Louisiana kingdom college, the place Reid and Fischer met in 1974. years later, they have been married. Reid strains their wealthy literary partnership and stocks their scholarly travels in pursuit of educational examine. whereas Reid wove her approach from William Faulkner to Virginia Woolf to Tillie Olsen, John deepened his services on his lifelong scholarly topic, Jonathan rapid. jointly they equipped a kinfolk with Panthea’s son, Reid, from a prior marriage and their daughter, Hannah. throughout the ups and downs of educational lifestyles and its attendant politics, Panthea and John’s love for every different, for literature, and for his or her family members deepened and grew. After retiring from their instructing professions, the couple moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Panthea had via now accomplished biographies of Virginia Woolf and may whole one other on Tillie Olsen. John pursued his quick learn, ultimately taking on the venture of finishing the manuscript of Swift’s Word-Book—a dictionary speedy created for a feminine spouse named Esther Johnson. Reid narrates the surprise of her husband’s premature demise and stocks the painful, occasionally fun, consistently heartfelt tale of her trip towards therapeutic, in which she started writing back and likewise took up the duty of finishing the Word-Book, John’s ultimate, unfinished venture, carrying on with their literary partnership even after his demise. With an inventory of urged assets, physique and Soul presents a roadmap for these additionally being affected by loss and grief. regardless of the heartbreak, Reid’s tale eventually celebrates existence and the facility of love.