Still Life With Sierra: A Memoir

Just as life at its best is a journey toward meaning and truth, Still Life with Sierra recounts one family's quest to find where they belong, how they fit in after the tragic death of the author's young daughter rocked their perception of what life should be. Seeking a fresh start, the author, her husband, and their young sons relocated to the Netherlands. "We moved our lives, our belongings, our coffee mugs across the Atlantic, hoping to find a place that felt like home," the author said. Instead, they found something unexpected: that the home they were seeking didn't exist. It evaporated along with the life they used to have, before Sierra died, when the young couple with three small children lived a life that held great promise. This memoir tells of the cascading events that followed Sierra's death as the family searched for a new definition of home. Striving to fill in the blanks, they became pilgrims of the heart, finding it necessary to take measure of who they had become and what life meant to them in order to complete their journey. This is the story of how one family lost their place in the world and then found it again.

Peggy Sijswerda has a B.S. in English from Radford University, an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Old Dominion University. She has written for a variety of regional, national, and international magazines and currently publishes and edits a regional women’s magazine called Tidewater Women (tidewaterwomen.com). She has a passion for writing, travel, cooking, learning, nature, yoga, friends, and family. Peggy lives with her family in Virginia Beach. Please send your comments to sijswerda@hotmail.com and visit peggysijswerda.com for more information.