<DIV><p>"What an amazing story. . . . I applaud you for staying honest with yourself and listening to your feelings and what you needed to do to love and grieve and remember your son."?comment on Elizabeth Heineman's <I>Salon</I> article, "My Stillborn Child's Life after Death"</p><p><BR>In our mother-blaming culture, women who make unconventional choices find themselves under fire. And Elizabeth Heineman makes unusual choices. She has a baby at an advanced maternal age, chooses home birth with a midwife?and then, when her baby is born dead, she spends time with him. In <I>Ghostbelly</I>, Heineman's brave, disarming, and stunning memoir, she recounts her indescribable grief after delivering a stillborn son, her extraordinary and intimate bonding with the baby's body before the burial, and the impossible task of saying goodbye.<BR> In 2008 Elizabeth McCracken's memoir broke the silence surrounding stillbirth, which account for one in 160 pregnancies in the United States. Now <I>Ghostbelly</I> provides this necessary tale of motherhood? the need to invent our own rituals of grieving, and the unexpected space we occupy when birth and death coincide.<BR></p><p><B>Elizabeth Heineman</B> is a professor of history and gender, women's, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa. Her published works include <I>Before Porn Was Legal</I>, <I>Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones</I>, and <I>What Difference Does a Husband Make?</I> She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.</p><br></DIV>