Consumed by a Season

Consumed By A Season is a beautiful story that follows one woman’s fall into postpartum depression, ultimately leaving her husband and small baby behind in this life. The author weaves a story about a man and woman who fall in love and become one anothers’ best friends. They end up having a beautiful baby girl named Avery. Both the pregnancy and birth go well and the couple loves their baby. It is soon after, however, that the mother feels so overwhelmed and so helpless. She feels that she cannot take care of their baby and even calls her husband at work one day telling him that she has shaken little Avery. The husband rushes home and finds that Avery seems to be okay. But his wife is not. Soon after, the husband tells the wife that he will take the baby for the day so that she can have some time for herself. But the woman does not even know where to start. It is as if she has lost herself and doesn’t know how to pull herself out of this deep dark spiraling hole she has somehow fallen into. She decides that her husband and baby are better off without her and leaves.

Consumed By A Season deals with an issue that many women face after giving birth. I know many readers will relate to both the woman and her husband. This book is written with such wonderful descriptions and details that the words melt right off the pages and into the heart of the reader. During many parts of the book, I stopped reading and just imagined how these characters were feeling. One thing I noticed immediately was that the author did not give the main characters, the man and the woman, proper names or physical descriptions. In the author’s note at the end of the book, she states that this was done on purpose so that “the emphasis would not be on the characters themselves but on the experiences they are walking through.” Although the story works fine without them, I felt that having names would have actually helped connect me more with these characters because names give a little bit more of a personal feel to the story. It wouldn’t detract from the sympathy or empathy I felt for a character or make that character unrelatable.

Overall, this is a wonderful story that just about everyone should read. It’s not just for women who may be experiencing a perinatal disorder, but also for their loved ones to help understand that there are resources out there and that they are not alone.