In Without Your Father, Jessica Lynne Henkle leans fearlessly into the puzzling incongruences between the self before a great loss and the self after. Her work reads as much like poetry or flash fiction as a memoir, as image by image, she spins straw into pure gold. Each vignette both dissolves and reconciles the before and after, then and now, as Henkle gently invites the reader to journey through grief’s baffling and sometimes astonishing revelations. Without Your Father begins in a singular sorrow, but through surprising turns, suggests a shared space we all could inhabit, a space that allows ample room for healing.
– Gina Ochsner, Oregon Book Award winner and author of The Hidden Letters of Velta B.
This poignant memoir, presented through 112 short vignettes, offers a raw and disjointed portrayal of grief experienced in the year following the author’s father’s sudden death. Written in the second person, the book delves into the peculiar blend of absurdity, humor, and profound emptiness that accompanies the loss of a parent. It seamlessly transitions between everyday moments and deeper reflections, mirroring the unpredictable nature of grief.
– Natalie, A Book and a Dog
A tender reckoning with unbearable loss.
Five days after the sudden death of Jessica Lynne Henkle’s father, the phrase “when your father dies” seeped into her shock-sore brain, and for the next year, it kept pouring out of her. Half-blind with questions, she catalogued that year, in all its unmerciful unknowns, and ended up with a series of snapshots. Time passes, and yet, it doesn’t. Each day is distinct, and yet, it is exactly the same. Without Your Father is concrete, abstract, gentle, blunt, lighthearted, and deeply sad all at once. But then, so is grief.
Written in the second person and with searing honesty, the book consists of 112 vignettes that depict the oddities and absurdities of navigating sudden loss, along with the utter devastation of it: the daily, sometimes hourly trudging forward in a life that has become unrecognizable now that one person is no longer in it. Some of the vignettes tell a story; others are more like prose poems. The book can be read in one sitting, savored over several days, or dropped into at random for a dose of reflection, comfort, or validation. More than anything, that’s what Henkle yearned for during her time of terrible grief: the sense that what she was feeling was not alien, even if it was alien to her.
Without Your Father seeks to mimic the grieving process itself and allows readers to enter its pages and move through their own losses, in their own ways. It is, at its core, an offering—from one grieving soul to another.
Available May 5, 2026.
Jessica Lynne Henkle 