Brilliant new voice Sarah McColl presents her life-affirming memoir of her experiences with dual loss, recounting how she endured the end of her marriage and her mother's cancer diagnosis by reconnecting with her childhood home and preparing elaborate, nourishing meals.

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes—lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked—McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

Mining the dual losses of both her young marriage and her beloved mother, McColl confronts her identity as a woman, walking lightly in the footsteps of the woman who came before her and clinging fast to the joy she left behind. With candor reminiscent of classics like C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, Joy Enough offers a story that blooms with life.

Sarah McColl was founding editor-in-chief of Yahoo Food and holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her essays have appeared in the Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney's, and elsewhere, and she has been a MacDowell Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Los Angeles.