In this definitive treatise on romantic loss, Laura Pratt brings the subject from the shadows into the light as she travels deeply into the experience to report back about her journey through heartbreak, from grief to gratitude, to perspective and meaning at last. When Laura Pratt's beloved long-distance partner of six years tells her "it's over" at their usual bi-weekly parting at a busy downtown train station, she is caught by complete surprise and sent reeling. For his part, he closes himself off and refuses to communicate or acknowledge any of Laura's overtures or requests for explanation. In the following days, months, and then years, Laura faces a future without him, and struggles to make sense of this loss as she goes through the breakup alone. She hopes this is only a pause (however lengthening) and that their love will someday soon be revived, and she resists letting go of the memories—reliving them in sensuous, earthy detail, counting days on the calendar and special signs from the universe that could mean her beloved is still thinking of her, and—crying her eyes out. Laura bares her soul as she brings alive the ups and downs of heartbreak—the highs when the relationship was in full, mutual bloom, and the lows of her vigil for Sam. Seeking to understand this free fall and how so many before her survived it, she draws on sources from across time and form to uncover the poetic, philosophical, scientific and psychological accounts and investigations into how we human beings experience romantic loss. Effortlessly, Laura weaves this background of cultural history together with her own bracingly honest story of pain, sorrow and passion, and offers readers solace in the common experience. Heartbroken charts a hard terrain we all know—pocked with rejection, slick with grief—but it also offers some light and a map, and hope for arriving on the other side. Imbued with Laura’s longing, erudition and hard-earned wisdom, Heartbroken dares to delve into one of the most universal of experiences, perhaps the one that makes us the most human of all.