A life-altering neurological disorder. A traumatic birth. An unlikely survival. Pieces You’ll Never Get Back is a harrowing and redemptive memoir, in which a new mother must reconstruct her shattered mind, her relationship to her religious upbringing, and her life’s purpose
At 29, as a young writer working on her first novel, Samina Ali nearly died giving birth to her son. Miraculously, she survived the unchecked eclampsia that had endangered her pregnancy, instead sustaining major brain injury and falling into a coma as she gave birth. When she woke up, only her deepest memories were intact. Her husband was a stranger to her, she didn’t remember having a baby, and any language other than her native Urdu was foreign. Medical consensus was she would never recover—much less write—again.
Advised to think of her brain as a shattered puzzle, Ali began the long and difficult journey of piecing herself back together: learning to walk, speak, and accomplish basic human tasks alongside her newborn. She attempted to reckon with her past identity as a writer and a wife, and her new identity as a mother. Despite her miraculous survival, the disconnect between the old and the new self was devastating. It would be three years before she felt remotely normal, and seven before she was mended and could fully connect with her son.
Ali pairs the story of her “death” and recovery with the parallel narrative of her relationship to her Islamic upbringing and her fluctuating connection to her faith, incorporating meditations on religious narratives of death, the afterlife, resurrection, and reincarnation. Both deeply personal and steeped in religious thought, Pieces You’ll Never Get Back is a uniquely propulsive, searching, and ultimately, inspiring work of memoir.
PRAISE
San Francisco Chronicle, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Zibby Owen, A Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Named a Best Book of March by Los Angeles Times, Ms. Magazine, Alta Journal, Pure Wow, Write or Die Magazine
Featured on the cover of The Washington Post Sunday Book World
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“Ali’s extraordinary journey to rebuild a shattered sense of identity as a brain-damaged mother to a newborn— is chronicled in unflinching detail… [A] vivid and visceral portrait of existence within a shattered mind.” —Caitlin Gibson, T h e W a s h i n g t o n P o s t
“Pieces You’ll Never Get Back: A Memoir of Unlikely Survival is a powerful, intensely personal book. As an unflinching patient’s-eye record of a dangerous, poorly understood condition, it may also be an important one.” —Kevin Canfield, T h e S a n F r a n c i s c o C h r o n i c l e
“Samina Ali has managed to write a hopeful and loving memoir about the most terrifying and challenging events in her life: the traumatic birth of her first son and the accompanying brain injury that left her a shell of the person she once was. This is an inspiring story of recovery that you won’t want to miss.” —Karla Strand, M s . M a g a z i n e
“Ali elegantly retraces this story, interspersing it with reflections on her Muslim faith; her upbringing between
Hyderabad, India, and Minnesota; and her identities as a writer and a mother.” —A l t a
“This harrowing memoir is a poignant reflection on resilience, faith and identity.” —Sarah Stiefvater, PureWow
“Harrowing. . . [Ali writes] with intensity and truth about complex themes such as inequities in healthcare for women, especially brown and Black women. In the book, she also extrapolates connections between cultures, specifically American and Muslim, finding common characteristics in Christian and Muslim religious concepts, emphasizing the importance of surrendering control, living with memory loss, and addressing how
names given to children and communities reflect history.” —Lou Fancher, East Bay Express
“Heartbreaking yet hopeful, Pieces You’ll Never Get Back embodies a woman full of grit and the determination to rediscover herself and heal from inconceivable damage.” —Booklist Starred Review
“How does one find the peace and acceptance to move on from a tragedy such as this? Ali’s ability to focus on healing and rebuilding severed bonds with her past and present self is a remarkable exercise in letting go. A determination to write helped establish new neurological pathways in her brain to replace those that were simply gone. There are astonishing developments and spiritual detours in Pieces You’ll Never Get Back, with flashes of the trailblazing Muslim women’s rights activist Ali was destined to become after her miraculous recovery.” —Shahina Piyarali, Shelf Awareness Starred Review
“Her stunning memoir […] straddles cultures, and even life and death, as Ali recovers painstakingly slowly, navigating motherhood while putting herself back together like a puzzle.” —Leslie Stephens, Morning Person
“Herein, supple, luminous prose carries a message of near inconceivable resilience and hope. Pieces You’ll Never Get Back is an inspiring memoir about rising from despair and triumphing over catastrophic brain injury.” —FOREWORD Reviews
“A unique record of what it is like to lose everything we think of as ourselves, and to painstakingly reclaim it.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Every woman, and every man in her life, should read this book. Beautifully crafted, clear, and disarming, it is not a new motherhood memoir so much as it is a profound meditation on faith and connectedness, the self and uncertainty, and above all, recovery and resurrection. It’s an intimate portrait of one woman as she moves amid the wilderness between life and death, and it is astounding.“ —Nina McConigley, PEN Open Book Award-winning author of Cowboys and East Indians
“In Pieces You’ll Never Get Back, Samina Ali weaves a deeply moving story of resilience, spirituality, and the bonds that unite us across faiths and cultures. It is both a call for greater awareness of maternal health and a celebration of our shared humanity. A powerful testament to hope.” —Reza Aslan, author of An American Martyr in Persia
“In this vivid and visceral tale of a childbirth gone unimaginably wrong, what rivets most is the author’s fierce and enduring will to make herself whole by writing her story. A triumph.” —Amy Irvine, author of Trespass and Desert Cabal
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