When her twenty-five-year marriage unexpectedly falls apart journalist Florence Williams
expects the loss to hurt. What she doesn't expect is that she'll end up in the hospital
examining close-up the way our cells listen to loneliness. She travels to the frontiers of the
science of social pain to learn why heartbreak hurts so much and why so much of the
conventional wisdom about it is wrong. Searching for insight as well as personal strategies to
game her way back to health Williams tests her blood for genetic markers of grief undergoes
electrical shocks in a laboratory while looking at pictures of her ex and ventures to the
wilderness in search of awe as an antidote to loneliness. For readers of Wild and Lab Girl
Heartbreak is a remarkable merging of science and self-discovery that will change the way we
think about loneliness health and what it means to fall in and out of love.
