"A Fine Yellow Dust" is a collection written by the poet in response to the suicide of her 26 year old daughter, Hanna. These poems are searing, visceral, and heartbreaking. In some there is a righteous fury. In others a remarkable restraint. The poet deftly weaves in the everyday details of her daughter's life - her clothes, her cats, her particular terms of endearment - with the brutal details of her death and its aftermath, which makes for unsettling but affecting reading.

Proof positive of the ability of writing to heal and sustain, this is a beautiful collection, and one I will be thinking about for a long time to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a beautiful collection of poetry exploring the author’s loss of her daughter through suicide. It was hard to read - heart wrenching, honest and eye opening. 

 The author’s writing tugged me into her feelings, her emotions. I have never experienced such loss and I hope I never have to, but I also passionately believe that writing is a powerful and underestimated tool to heal some of the broken pieces from whatever you have experienced. Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a chance to read and review this book.

"I am so like my Mama Bear. And we laughed. I’m sure we laughed. Did one of us know even then how April —that cruelest month— would follow, and that I would stand in her closet after, bury my face in the scarf she wore when we hugged goodbye—"



As someone who has lost a friend to suicide this book of poems really hit me in the feels. You can feel her pain through each poem inside. Literally brought tears to my eyes.

A Fine Yellow Dust
by Laura Apol
Michigan State University Press
Health, Mind & Body | Poetry
Pub Date 01 Aug 2021



I am reviewing a copy of A Fine Yellow Dust through Michigan State University Press and Netgalley:


Late in April of 2017, Laura Apol’s twenty six year old daughter Hanna took her own life on a sunny April Afternoon, afterwards she was shattered.


In the days and weeks that followed Hanna’s death she began to write.



Apol had long believed in the therapeutic possibilities of writing, having conducted workshops on writing-for-healing for more than a decade. Yet after Hanna’s death, she had her own therapeutic writing to do, turning her anguish, disbelief, and love into poems that map the first year of loss. This collection is the result of that writing, giving voice to grief as it is lived, moment by moment, memory by memory, event by event.





If you are looking for a heartwarming, as well as heartbreaking collection of poetry dealing with grief and loss from a fresh perspective. A Mother’s grief told in beautifully written poem.



I give A Fine Yellow Dust five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!