Stacy Morrison is the former Editor-in-Chief of Redbook magazine. She had a beautiful baby, a new home and she had just landed her dream job. But then her husband suddenly announced that their marriage was over, and the life of her dreams fell apart. This is a memoir (one Lisa Steinke calls a Must-Read!) about a woman finding herself in divorce. And she also found the perfect cover.
Here's Stacy:
"When I started writing the proposal for the book, I hadn't yet settled on the name the book is called today, Falling Apart in One Piece. I was at that time going back and forth between Two Years Under Water and The Zen of Divorce, though I knew a better title was out there. But it's true that my first idea of what the book might look like came from those two titles, from the zen and from the water: I imagined a blue field, that could be water or sky, the words standing out in a dramatic way. I liked the ambiguity of it—sky or water? tears or rain? happy or sad?—and felt it represented the tone of the book, that two years of searching you go through when the life you were living suddenly stops mid-breath and changes completely.
"When it came time to make the book cover, the book had been called Falling Apart in One Piece for a long time, almost two years, and so I'd started to see something different. The image I shared with the art director at Simon & Schuster was something I thought captured the poignancy in the book, and a little bit of the childhood dreams laid to rest, but I also said that I knew this image was not at all right: I kept seeing a broken doll, one of the porcelain, Victorian dolls with the eyes that click open and shut, lying on a white cover, with the arms and legs separated from the doll, but still right there. I used that image to explain an idea of showing 'in one piece'—but I also knew that particular image was just too creepy. We all knew that the 'optimism' from the subtitle absolutely had to come through loud and clear in the image. And the empty-eyed doll wasn't that! But that's where I started with them. And then I talked about aqua, the color, what it means in the book, how the water kept coming into my life, whether in the rain or the leaking basement or coming in the roof. And in the end, I painted the living room of my new apartment aqua, and used that decision in the end of the book to represent my coming to terms with all the sad and the hard, and turning it into something good. So aqua, and the doll, and then they went off on their own to think."
"They came back to me with three cover concepts, and I remember opening the email and just holding my breath. It's crazy how in love with your book you are at the end, and how seeing the cover for the first time is just SCARY. I opened the first image and... my heart sank. It was a smashed dinner plate, in really bright colors like orange and red, on a blue background. 'Oh, lord, I thought. I'm Heloise!' It just seemed too classically domestic, too much the clichéd idea of what motherhood and womanhood is, a two-dimensional idea of a woman's midlife that I'd been combatting and enriching in my many years as the editor in chief of Redbook magazine."
"So I quickly clicked on image #2. A Gerbera daisy beaming out at me from a broken pot, dirt spilled out across a white tile floor. Again, the nightmare of being trapped in a kitchen, as if a woman's whole life comes down to what's for dinner. But I knew what the daisy was reaching for; it certainly was cheerful. Then I clicked on image #3, and I gasped and clapped my hands over my mouth. It was the dandelion, blowing its little seeds away on an aqua background, and I stared at it and thought about all that it conjured—yes, falling apart, but also hopes and wishes, childhood dreams and optimism, and the fact that it's a weed, a weed with such a fantastic power, to close your eyes and breathe out and imagine something else for yourself, which is, of course, exactly what my book is about. I immediately emailed back to Simon & Schuster and said, 'Number 3, absolutely. I love it!' I printed out the comp and showed it to everyone in my office and I was just beaming, it was so exactly right."
"When it came time to nail down the final cover, I asked S&S to do different typeface treatments, to try to use all small capital letters, or to use up-and-down and not have just the lowercase, but in the end, the cover went out pretty much exactly as they had designed it for the first-draft comp, except for the addition of Liz Gilbert's quote to the very top of the book. There was something winsome about the lowercase that made sense, it captures the very private aspect of the book, how naked it is. And yes, also how optimistic the book is.
"I just love the cover. I still do. Every time I see it, whether on postcards or online, or especially in the opening animation to the website for my book, I smile. And it's been really satisfying how many people have come up to me and said, 'The title of your book is perfect. And the cover is, too.'"
I agree that this cover is a beautiful illustration of the title and the story. I've always loved these dandelions blowing in the wind—soft, free, gorgeous, and breaking apart. Visit Stacy's website, where women of all ages are coming together to share their experiences with divorce and creating a community of support!
What do you guys think of this cover?
Melissa Walker is the author of four Young Adult novels, including the Violet trilogy and Lovestruck Summer. She is co-creator of the popular teen newsletter I Heart Daily and the new awkward-stage blog Before You Were Hot. Her author blog, where Cover Stories originated, is melissacwalker.com.
I like it!
The way Stacy describes how her life was/is, sounds like the perfect fit. Dandelions are pretty much indestructible! They reseed themselves.... They are edible, and can be made into wine! 
The background color is a color of calm hope....(my interpretation) And yes, the type face gives a timidity, and vulnerability to what the words are implying. The title is great, and I can see the difficulty in showing this contradiction in art. But with this dandelion: You may break apart, but also (at the same time) have so much left to give....a survivor! Nice job!
Kathy
