Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation by Sarah Yahm
Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief in a stunning tale for fans of Allegra Goodman and Rebecca Makkai.
The night after fleeing her mother’s funeral, cellist Louise Rakoff meets aspiring therapist Leon Rosenberg at a Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1974. Over the next two decades, they build a marriage and a family based on honesty, argument, and a shared appreciation of the absurd. But that rock-solid foundation crumbles when Louise is diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease—the same one responsible for her mother's slow, agonizing passing.
Determined to spare Leon and their daughter Lydia from her messy decline, Louise makes the simultaneously selfish and altruistic decision to leave her family and die on her own terms. Her disappearance forces the Rosenbergs to grapple with how to find meaning in the face of mortality—a manic and mystical quest that sends them careening across the globe, colliding into tattoo artists, Chasidic Jews, playworkers, and witches. And finally, back into each other.
Bursting with humor and heartbreak, and inspired by Yahm's own experience as a disabled author facing the existential terror of parenting while ill, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation leaps into the trials of motherhood, the impossibility of adolescence, the hopelessness of grief, and all the wild beauty and hilarity that makes life worth living anyway.
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
Hardback: 338 pages
ISBN: 9781938603280
Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief in a stunning tale for fans of Allegra Goodman and Rebecca Makkai.
The night after fleeing her mother’s funeral, cellist Louise Rakoff meets aspiring therapist Leon Rosenberg at a Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1974. Over the next two decades, they build a marriage and a family based on honesty, argument, and a shared appreciation of the absurd. But that rock-solid foundation crumbles when Louise is diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease—the same one responsible for her mother's slow, agonizing passing.
Determined to spare Leon and their daughter Lydia from her messy decline, Louise makes the simultaneously selfish and altruistic decision to leave her family and die on her own terms. Her disappearance forces the Rosenbergs to grapple with how to find meaning in the face of mortality—a manic and mystical quest that sends them careening across the globe, colliding into tattoo artists, Chasidic Jews, playworkers, and witches. And finally, back into each other.
Bursting with humor and heartbreak, and inspired by Yahm's own experience as a disabled author facing the existential terror of parenting while ill, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation leaps into the trials of motherhood, the impossibility of adolescence, the hopelessness of grief, and all the wild beauty and hilarity that makes life worth living anyway.
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
Hardback: 338 pages
ISBN: 9781938603280
Following a tight-knit, eccentric Jewish family, the Rosenbergs, over four decades, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation combines the madness of motherhood with the manic absurdity of grief in a stunning tale for fans of Allegra Goodman and Rebecca Makkai.
The night after fleeing her mother’s funeral, cellist Louise Rakoff meets aspiring therapist Leon Rosenberg at a Rosh Hashanah dinner in 1974. Over the next two decades, they build a marriage and a family based on honesty, argument, and a shared appreciation of the absurd. But that rock-solid foundation crumbles when Louise is diagnosed with a rare degenerative disease—the same one responsible for her mother's slow, agonizing passing.
Determined to spare Leon and their daughter Lydia from her messy decline, Louise makes the simultaneously selfish and altruistic decision to leave her family and die on her own terms. Her disappearance forces the Rosenbergs to grapple with how to find meaning in the face of mortality—a manic and mystical quest that sends them careening across the globe, colliding into tattoo artists, Chasidic Jews, playworkers, and witches. And finally, back into each other.
Bursting with humor and heartbreak, and inspired by Yahm's own experience as a disabled author facing the existential terror of parenting while ill, Unfinished Acts of Wild Creation leaps into the trials of motherhood, the impossibility of adolescence, the hopelessness of grief, and all the wild beauty and hilarity that makes life worth living anyway.
Publication Date: May 6, 2025
Hardback: 338 pages
ISBN: 9781938603280
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR UNFINISHED ACTS OF WILD CREATION
"With humor and energy to burn, Sarah Yahm’s poised debut novel UNFINISHED ACTS OF WILD CREATION introduces readers to a wonderfully messy family that's forced to grapple with matters of the body and the spirit."
––Aaron Hamburger, author of HOTEL CUBA
"This sweeping family saga gripped me from the very first sentence. Narrated with restless intelligence and cast with thorny intellectuals, Yahm's timely debut beautifully interrogates the way illness can dictate the confines of our lives, down to the smallest, most intimate moments."
–Joanna Rakoff, author of MY SALINGER YEAR and A FORTUNATE AGE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Yahm has worked as an educator, oral historian, documentarian, and writer. She has a Master’s degree in Social Documentation from UC Santa Cruz and in Public Humanities from Brown University. She taught at UC Santa Cruz and Brown University. She has published in Slate, The Bellevue Literary Review, and placed pieces on NPR and affiliates, among others. In her work as a writer and an academic, she’s focused on the lived experience and social meaning of illness and disability. She lives in Montpelier, VT.
