The Reading Bud

Book Details:

Author: Elizabeth Jaeger
Release Date: September 16, 2025
Series:
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction
Format: E-book 
Pages: 282 pages
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Blurb:
When the world first went into lockdown, on a lark, Jaeger started a blog. Then, on Day 12, the unimaginable happened. Her dad got sick and she rushed him to the hospital. What followed was a close look at what it was like to watch a loved one suffer from COVID. After a nineteen day battle, her father died and the family was stricken with grief. But grieving during the pandemic was drastically different than in a time of normalcy. There were no funerals. No religious services. No ability to mingle with friends. Just the heavy feeling of loss, which at times was suffocating. Stolen: Love and Loss in the Time of COVID-19 captures life in New York City – the constant sound of sirens, the new graves dug daily, the eerie silence and desolation of local playgrounds – the epicenter of the virus. In flashbacks throughout the narrative, vignettes illustrate her dad in happier times-a doting father, an adoring grandfather, a man who always put family first. It depicts encountering COVID up close and places it in a political and personal context. While the story is about one family, it is not unique. COVID touched everyone’s lives and many endured a similar experience.

Review

Stolen: Love and Loss in the Time of COVID-19 by Elizabeth Jaeger is an exceptionally intimate, unflinching memoirs I’ve read in recent years. In a world oversaturated with distant, clinical accounts of the pandemic, Elizabeth Jaeger offers something heartbreakingly rare: a deeply personal narrative of loss that is both sharply detailed and universally resonant.

The book talks about the author’s father who fell gravely ill during COVID-19 lockdowns. What follows is a searing account of not just a man’s rapid decline due to COVID, but the implosion of a family’s entire emotional infrastructure in a time when even mourning was regulated and restricted. What struck me most is the clarity and honesty in author Jaeger’s voice. There is no melodrama here, just truth—raw, painful, and exquisitely observed. The way she balances the clinical with the poetic, the fear with the memory, the personal with the political, is nothing short of masterful. She weaves in flashbacks that breathe life into her father’s character—a man full of love, idiosyncrasies, and integrity—making the eventual loss even more gutting.

The depiction of New York City as both a ghost town and a siren-laced epicenter adds a haunting backdrop to her narrative. I found myself stopping multiple times, just to sit with the weight of it. And yet, this is not just a story about death—it’s about love. Fierce, unwavering love. It’s about remembering someone wholly and refusing to let their narrative be reduced to statistics.

Author Elizabeth Jaeger has not only chronicled her experience; she’s captured the grief of a generation. Stolen is a time capsule, a testimony, and a reminder that behind every “case” or “death toll” is a family forever changed.

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