Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, And Other Explosives

From the bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink comes “her new masterwork” (The New York Times),an unforgettable memoir that is “a beautifully wrought ode to life” (The Washington Post).


A lifelong worrier, Mary Laura Philpott always kept an eye out for danger, a habit that only intensified when she became a parent. But she looked on the bright side, too, believing that if she cared enough, she could keep her loved ones safe.

Then, in the dark of one quiet morning, she woke abruptly to a terrible sound—and found her teenage son unconscious on the floor. In the aftermath of a crisis that darkened her sunny spirit, she wondered: If this happened, what else could happen? And how do any of us keep going when we can’t know for sure what’s coming next?

Leave it to the writer who “puts words to the human condition in a life-affirming, joyful, and surprisingly funny way” (Lori Gottlieb, New York Times bestselling author) to illuminate what it means to move through life with a soul made of equal parts anxiety and optimism (and while she’s at it, to ponder the mysteries of backyard turtles and the challenges of spatchcocking a turkey).

Hailed as a modern classic that “deserves pride of place alongside Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Joan Didion’s The White Album, and Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad” (Garrett M. Graff, New York Times bestselling author), Bomb Shelter “reveals, page after page, that the love that makes us vulnerable is the same force that makes us powerful” (Maggie Smith, bestselling author of Goldenrod).