Heartbroken Field Notes on a Constant Condition

In this definitive treatise on romantic loss, journalist Laura Pratt exposes the subject of heartbreak with a deep dive into the experience. Her reports chronicle her journey from grief to gratitude, and to perspective and meaning at last.

Heartbroken charts a hard terrain we all know—pocked with rejection, slick with sorrow—but it also offers some light and a map. And hope for arriving—changed, broadened, grateful—on the other side.

     When Laura Pratt’s long-distance partner of six years tells her “it’s over” at a busy downtown train station, she is sent reeling, the breakup having come out of the blue. Her partner, meanwhile, closes himself off, refusing to acknowledge Laura and her requests for explanation.

    In the following days, months, and then years, Laura struggles to make sense of this loss, alone and filled with questions. She mourns him and takes comfort in whatever reassurances she imagines the universe is sending her, and in identifying value for her ordeal under every rock she flips.

     Here, Laura bares her soul as she brings alive the ups and downs of heartbreak—the recalled highs of when the relationship was in full, mutual bloom, and the long-time lows of her solitary vigil for Sam.

     Seeking to understand this freefall and how so many before her survived it, she draws on forces across time and form and uncovers literary, philosophical, scientific, and psychological accounts of how we human beings fall in love in the first place, and why, when it ends, some of us take longer to get over it, or never do.

    Effortlessly, Laura Pratt weaves this background of cultural history with her own bracing story of heartbreak and loss, and offers the heartbroken some solace in the common experience.

     Imbued with Laura’s longing, erudition, and hard-earned wisdom, Heartbroken dares to delve into this most universal of mortal ordeals—perhaps the one that makes us the most human of all.

LAURA PRATT is a long-time journalist, writer and editor. She writes for Canadian magazines and edits books. Her first memoir, The Fleeting Years, was published in 2004. She lives in Toronto with whatever kids and dogs she can corral to join her. She’s a 2020 graduate of the University of King’s College’s creative nonfiction MFA. She won an honourable mention in Prairie Fire’s 2020 CNF contest and was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s 2019 CNF contest. She will serve as a judge at the National Magazine Awards in 2022, as she did in 2020 and 2021.