The Future Tense of Joy (A Memoir)

A deeply moving account of love, friendship, and the complexities of memory and healing told through an intertwining story of two women grappling with their demons; one is the narrator, a mother and survivor of sexual assault, and the other, a young woman in a magazine, familiar but a stranger. For readers of Jeanette Walls, Alexandra Fuller, and anyone who has struggled to find hope on the long road to healing, and freedom in the power to forgive.

When Jessica Teich happens upon the obituary of a fellow Rhodes scholar named Lacey, she vows to unravel the truth behind the young woman’s suicide. As Lacey’s story unspools, Teich begins to detect haunting links to her own life, forcing her to reflect on her own anguished past. A tender, profoundly affecting book, The Future Tense of Joy immerses readers in the fluid shifts between past and present, as each woman struggles to free herself from the ghosts of her memory. The book defies genres to tell the stories of two talented, troubled women, each trying to reclaim her future and find strength and consolation in the embrace of the people she loves.

“'No one was less likely to take her own life.' That’s what her Oxford thesis advisor said. From the moment I stumbled across her obituary, late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I was captivated. This brilliant woman seemed incandescent. She was gifted and generous and beloved. Twenty-six years old, and a newlywed. Why would she decide to die?"

“Jessica Teich’s understanding of trauma is the infallible authority upon which her tale rests. But the delicacy and nuance with which she renders this story is that of a poet. This beautiful, compassionately imagined book will bring a pang of recognition to anyone who has traveled to young adulthood from a wounded adolescence via the quest for ‘perfection.’”  —MERYL STREEP