Jacque Gorelick’s essays about motherhood, health, family, and estrangement appear or are forthcoming in The New York Times, Salon, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, HAD, Healthy Women, and other publications.
Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home—medical memoir, family reckoning, and love story—is forthcoming with Vine Leaves Press (February 2026).
Early Praise
“A fresh take on the epistolary memoir. Jacque Gorelick expertly refracts a whole, remarkable life through the prism of ten unforgettable days. Map of Heart throbs with dramatic tension and offers a poignant reminder that, sometimes, miracles do happen.”
-Genevieve Kingston, author of Did I Ever Tell You?
“A powerful and honest examination of the tenuous nature of life, love, and family. Jacque Gorelick offers readers an intimate look at how a single medical emergency can alter the course of everything. Map of a Heart is a gripping story of survival, friendship, and holding onto hope in the face of impossible odds.”
-Elizabeth Silver, author of The Tincture of Time: A Memoir of (Medical) Uncertainty
“In Map of a Heart Jacque Gorelick plunges readers into the single most terrifying moment of her life (young husband, new baby, fragile heart) and then gracefully dances time backwards to tell her family’s creation story. Gorelick’s love, wit and wisdom ripple through time, page after page.”
-Heather Harpham, author of the Reese Witherspoon book club memoir, Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After
After losing her mother at eight, Jacque Gorelick spent her childhood shuffling from one temporary home to the next, seeking belonging. In her twenties, she fell in love, married, and had a baby—finally finding a glimpse of stability. But everything changed on a day that began in sunshine and ended in a frantic 911 call when Jacque’s husband collapsed in front of her on a jogging trail.
What follows is a harrowing stretch in an ICU waiting room, where she must advocate for her comatose husband's life while caring for their newborn, navigating tenuous family dynamics, and confronting the ghosts of her past.
Map of a Heart is a deeply personal look at what it means to find belonging beyond biology and build a life when the foundation was fractured from the start. For readers who’ve ever asked, What makes a family? this book offers an answer rooted in resilience, hope, and unconditional love.
