The Price of Breathing

“This is a tender, beautifully woven and expertly crafted story told in poems about the power of first loves, long marriages, the ache of illness, and the way feelings and actions from the past linger in all of us” Antonia Albany, author of Around the Corner, Up Ahead

Meet Helen and Harry Crawley, a couple living in the American West in 1951. A letter arrives that will detonate their everyday routine and send Harry swiftly traveling East (to Helen’s protest) to visit his ailing first love, Flora, now a polio patient hospitalized in an iron lung.

What follows—in telegrams, free-verse poems, letters, and postcard text—is a timeless look at relationship dynamics, raising questions about the strength and meaning of first love long after the sweethearts have parted, the teamwork and ties that bind later-in-life bonds, and the challenges of living with chronic illness.

Will Harry return home to Helen? Should Helen accept his return if he does? Or will Harry’s renewed bond with Flora prove a permanent disruption and the start of a different life for all involved?