Mosaic, A Memoir
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Release date: March 4, 2025
Praise for Mosaic:
Mosaic made me want to curl up with a cup of tea and my cat, a bouquet of flowers and my journal nearby, which is another way of saying that Laura Gaddis’s memoir opened my heart in unexpected ways to love and grief and joy. I found myself delighted with the book’s inventive shape. To give loss its proper place in our lives does require new ways of telling our stories, and Gaddis shows us how to do this. Be prepared: you will be changed by this brave and tender memoir.
— Daisy Hernández, A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir
Gaddis tells her story with precise and beautiful language. But most profoundly, she chooses to tell that story through a collection of flickering, shimmering moments of loss and healing, profound sadness and intense joy. Mosaic is a remarkable yet relatable story of what can be learned from life’s harshest moments. Gaddis’s writing makes space for all of it to shine through.
—Pepper Stetler, author of A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother’s Reckoning with the IQ Test
Mosaic is a moving exploration of love, loss, and the delicate, yet unbreakable threads–or welds–that hold us to the ones we’ve lost and the ones who are present. This book illuminates the journey of living with grief while finding a way to keep hope alive. It is the story of a mother navigating the spaces between what could have been and what is. Gorgeous. Deeply moving. Incredibly felt. A story of learning to live with grief amidst love. Of what could have been and what is. If you’ve ever loved deeply or lost painfully, this book will resonate with you. Through the lens of motherhood, marriage, and infertility, the author creates a tender, bittersweet story, keeping the light on for all that we have lost. I cried along with Laura, held my heart with Laura, and felt made and remade by her words and her wisdom. She asks so many compelling questions, and the ways her marriage and her family are made is balm to a broken heart. There is so much love in this book. A beautiful book of motherhood, of loss, and how and why we risk heartbreak again and again. Though our personal stories are different, as a mother of a stillborn daughter, I could relate and felt seen and comforted by the pages.
–TaraShea Nesbit, author of The Wives of Los Alamos and Beheld
Laura Gaddis went through it. She gets it. And she writes about it powerfully in Mosaic, her memoir of pregnancy, loss, hope, love, resilience, and joy.
—Ann Hood, New York Times Bestselling author Comfort and Fly Girl: A Memoir
Mosaic by Laura Gaddis is not the kind of book you breeze through in a few hours and then move onto something else. Rather, it is a story that requires pauses to process what was read, before moving onto the next part. And when you’ve reached the end, it’s with a sense that you have gained something: a better understanding of loss, perhaps, or an appreciation for what you still have.
A memoir of the multiple miscarriages she faced, followed by the birth of a fourth child who had health issues, Gaddis takes you through the stages of hope, loss, hope again. The narrative is balanced by the inclusion of factual information that provides a breathing space for the reader as she details the pain and heartbreak and fear she and her husband experienced.
Unlike some memoirs that follow a clear, chronological path, Mosaic moves back and forth—in some cases, all the way back to Gaddis’ childhood—yet it all flows together well. The flashbacks serve to illuminate events that affected her as an adult, and yet one is struck by the fact that despite them—or perhaps because of them—she was able to move forward through each loss.
The book’s title—Mosaic—is particularly apt. A mosaic is a piece of art that is formed by assembling various tiny fragments of glass, stone, shells or other bits and pieces to create a finished design. In her memoir, Gaddis pulls together various occurrences—many of which were jagged and painful to hold, metaphorically speaking—to create a beautiful illustration of that time.
It is an amalgamation of pain and fear, joy and hope, grief and gratitude that together offer comfort to those who have experienced similar situations. As for those who have not suffered the losses she and her husband have had, Mosaic serves as a reminder of what they have, and how quickly and unexpectedly it can be lost.
Mosaic is a beautiful piece of writing, delicately wrought yet with a strong thread running through it that brings the reader from the heartbreaking beginning to the final section, “Things I Have Learned.” As she wrote in the book, “Moving on means you forget, but moving forward means you let go of what happened without forgetting the change you sustained from it.”
–Nancy Christie, author of Finding Fran and Reinventing Rita
The story Laura Gaddis weaves in her debut memoir, Mosaic, mimics the artform from which the title emanates. Her tale is composed of both painful and beautiful moments, all intricately connected. For over five years, Laura and her husband endured four high-risk pregnancies and learned difficult truths about pregnancy loss, the medical system, and resilience. Her final pregnancy, though more successful, brought unforeseen challenges, including fetal abnormalities, a premature birth, and an emotional NICU journey.Through grief, perseverance, and the unwavering support of loved ones, Laura ultimately found strength in motherhood, even as she redefined what it meant to be a mother. Gaddis’ storytelling is honest, often raw, drilling right to the bone and distilling the essence of an important tale from which we can all draw crucial lessons. She is a fresh new talent, an emerging writer to watch and follow. And Mosaic is an inspiring testament to resilience, love, and transformation, offering encouragement to anyone facing loss, uncertainty, and the complexities of parenthood.
–Julie McGue, award winning author of Twice a Daughter: A Search for Identity, Family, and Belonging; Belonging Matters: Conversations on Adoption, Family, and Kinship; and Twice the Family, A Memoir of Love, Loss and Sisterhood