The Murmur of Everything Moving: A Memoir

When Maureen and Steve met in their twenties, he'd left behind a difficult marriage and she had ended a troubled relationship. In each other, they found a passionate love and shared a dream of a living off the land in rural Michigan. Three years later, when Steve, at twenty-nine, was diagnosed with cancer, they embarked on an all-out effort to save his life. When Steve's childhood friend, Joey, a drug addict, learned that Steve needed money for experimental cancer treatments that insurance wouldn't cover, he offered to sell Steve's pain medication, a synthetic opioid with a high street value, to help pay the costs; only one of the friends would survive. The Murmur of Everything Moving chronicles a young, working-class couple's odyssey through the medical mileu, as they navigate the terrain of illness and caregiving, of compassion and loss. This beautiful and aching memoir is ultimately a story of love—romantic, brotherly, and spiritual—in all its challenging but exquisite complexities.

About the Author :
MAUREEN STANTON is the author of Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood, winner of the Maine Literary Award for memoir and Killer Stuff and Tons of Money: An Insider’s Look at the World of Flea Markets, Antiques, and Collecting, winner of the Massachusetts Book Award in nonfiction. Her essays have received the Iowa Review prize, the Sewanee Review prize, Pushcart Prizes, the American Literary Review award, and the Thomas J. Hruska award from Passages North. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maine Arts Commission, the MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. www.maureenstantonwriter.com

Review :
Beguiling, vivid, and rich with loving devotion, The Murmur of Everything Moving is a beautiful, heartbreaking memoir. The writing is precise and excellent, from the darkest moments to the jokes. There are certain lines so good you want to write them down so you don't forget. There is sorrow, portrayed without fear, and there is love exercised like a powerful muscle. It's a wonder to behold, and so is this book. What I loved most about The Murmur of Everything Moving was the way it moved along the same storm systems of high agony and the quiet routine of daily despair–just like the terrible diagnosis it describes. It is moving and tortuous without being cloying or sentimental. The ending is simple and spare and poignant and made my mouth go dry. The Murmur of Everything Moving is Maine author Maureen Stanton’s award-winning third book, a stirring memoir of love, loss and resilience. Stanton brings so much heart and fellow-feeling to the table that the book’s natural weight is duly leavened.