— from the book

From the creator of the “How To Live” series, this is the story of the Uh-oh Heart that “lived far away and safe-safe tired of the chance-chance world.” It is for all of us with uh-oh hearts fearful of growing and risking and loving. This little book celebrates the forces that pull and push us out of ourselves — the anti-fear, life forces that change us and, in the end, save us.

The Uh-oh Heart wants the world to be safe-safe. It doesn’t want anything it can lose-lose. Yet the world will not comply. It sing-sings and pull-pulls and knock-knocks on the Uh-oh Heart’s door, offering itself in all of its ambiguity and complexity — love and loss, happy and sad, all bound together.

Like any heart, the Uh-oh Heart has to choose with almost every step of its journey — between life and fear…between risk and fear…between growth and fear…between love and fear. It’s as simple and as difficult as that. And what’s at stake is the course of its life.

Follow the Uh-oh Heart as it takes one wobble-wobble step after another. In its unlikely, neurotic way, the Uh-oh Heart makes a path that is both inspirational and transforming .

Sandy Gingras is a writer, poet, and artist with her own design company who has turned her love of prose and her love of the seashore into her life’s work. Ms. Gingras is a longtime resident of Long Beach Island, on the New Jersey coast, where she is actively involved in efforts to preserve open space and wetlands. She has a Masters in English from Duke University, and has been involved in poetry and writing workshops. She has traveled extensively along East Coast beaches and islands and lived for a year in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.