Irritable Hearts, Mac McClelland
Irritable Hearts, Mac McClelland
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Irritable Hearts
A PTSD Love Story

Author: Mac McClelland

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 11 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/24/2015


Synopsis

In 2010, human rights reporter Mac McClelland left Haiti after covering the lingering devastation of the earthquake. Back home, McClelland finds herself imagining vivid scenes of violence. She can’t sleep or stop crying. It becomes clear that she is suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, triggered by her trip and seemingly exacerbated by her experiences in the other charged places she’d reported from, places where she thought she’d escaped emotionally unscathed. The bewilderment about this sudden loss of self-control is magnified by her feelings for Nico, a French soldier she met in Haiti who despite their brief connection seems to have found a place in her confused heart.With inspiring fearlessness, McClelland sets out to repair her broken psyche. Investigating her own illness and the history of PTSD, she discovers she is not alone: traumatic events have sweeping influence. While we most often connect it to veterans, PTSD is more often caused by other manner of trauma, and can even be contagious—close proximity to those afflicted can trigger it in those around them. As McClelland confronts the realities of her disorder, she learns to open her heart to the love that seems to have found her at an inopportune moment.Vivid, suspenseful, and intimate, Irritable Hearts is an unforgettable exploration of vulnerability and resilience, control and acceptance, and a compelling story of survival that expands the definition of what trauma is and offers powerful hope for those who need to work through it.

About Mac McClelland

Mac McClelland is the author of For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question. She has written for Reuters, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications, and has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Online News Association, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Association for Women in Communications. Her work has also been nominated for two National Magazine Awards for Feature Writing and has been anthologized in Best American Magazine Writing 2011, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011, and Best Business Writing 2013.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kirsten

Regular people, whether they realize it or not, walk around believing, as you cannot make your way in the world without believing, that the universe is holding them. Well, the people on our side of the line thought, the fuck it does. ^ Only how I have felt my entire life, NBD. In reading other reviews......more

Goodreads review by Karen

I don't really think my rating on this book is fair. The rating and my enjoyment of the book were completely colored by my work. I spend the majority of each day in session with children and families who have experienced horrors. Many of them are struggling with PTSD because of it. This is a hard bo......more

Goodreads review by Tinea

Great book. Important book. A "thank you for writing this" sort of book. McClelland is a journalist who experienced trauma while reporting in Haiti, and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. This book is a first-person memoir of the experience of having and healing PTSD, gird......more