Published in 2024
257 pages
9 hours and 1 minute
Before going to medical school, Dr Rachel Clarke was a television journalist and documentary maker. She now specialises in palliative medicine, caring deeply about helping patients live the end of their lives as fully and richly as possible – and in the power of human stories to build empathy and inspire change.
Rachel is the author of three Sunday Times bestselling books. Breathtaking reveals what life was really like inside the NHS during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Dear Life, shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Biography Award and long-listed for the 2020 Baillie Gifford Prize, is based on her work in a hospice. It explores love, loss, grief, dying and what really matters at the end of life. Your Life in My Hands documents life as a junior doctor on the NHS frontline.
What is this book about?
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025
BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN, NEW SCIENTIST, AND PROSPECT
“The best narrative non-fiction I’ve read in years. Rachel Clarke has written a profound piece of investigative journalism and wrapped it up in poetry” –Christie Watson
“This is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL and riveting book: written with such humanity, empathy and knowledge, such tact and drama and eloquence. Vital reading, lifelong revelation” –Laura Cumming
The first of our organs to form, the last to die, the heart is both a simple pump and the symbol of all that makes us human: as long as it continues to beat, we hope.
One summer day, nine-year-old Keira suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident. Though her brain and the rest of her body began to shut down, her heart continued to beat. In an act of extraordinary generosity, Keira’s parents and siblings agreed that she would have wanted to be an organ donor. Meanwhile nine-year-old Max had been hospitalised for nearly a year with a virus that was causing his young heart to fail. When Max’s parents received the call they had been hoping for, they knew it came at a terrible cost to another family.
This is the unforgettable story of how one family’s grief transformed into a lifesaving gift. With tremendous compassion and clarity, Dr Rachel Clarke relates the urgent journey of Keira’s heart and explores the history of the remarkable medical innovations that made it possible, stretching back over a century and involving the knowledge and dedication not just of surgeons but of countless physicians, immunologists, nurses and scientists.
The Story of a Heart is a testament to compassion for the dying, the many ways we honour our loved ones, and the tenacity of love.
