Let Your Heart Be Broken

"Let Your Heart Be Broken is a consummate read in its entirety, exploring with uncommon sensitivity and poetic insight the fundamentals of love, forgiveness, creativity, and what it takes to emerge from the inner darkness into a vast vista of light, rooted in the life-tested truth that 'we are, in the end, a measure of the love we leave behind.'"

—Maria Popova, The Marginalian

"With this memoir, Tina Davidson accomplishes something much more difficult, because it goes deeper into the soul: conveying what goes on inside when an artist - one particular artist - is creating the work, the work that both reveals herself and escapes to become the world's, taking on a different meaning for every listener."

—Jon Sobel, Blogcritics

"an unequivocally poetic memoir on love, loss, and music"

—Hugh Morris, VAN Magazine

"Rarely does a composer tie together life events and inner creative propulsion in a narrative that speaks directly to their audience. Ms. Davidson's music is lyrical and vulnerable, as is her voice in words." 

—Hilary Hahn, Violinist, and Grammy Winner

"Tina Davidson writes with precision and poetry"

—Tim Page, Pulitzer Prize-winning music writer

How does one's song come to be? -the rhythmic tones of a Swedish lullaby, -the haunting chants of Turkish muezzins calling Muslims to prayer, -the natural voices of ocean waves, tree leaves, raindrops. Tina Davidson takes us with her on a deeply sensory journey as she explores the complex patterns of pathways... her life-web of stories shared through her music and, now, also through the written word in her book, Let Your Heart Be Broken...a book sparking readers to reflect on the threads of our own songs.

—Rosemary Northcutt, 5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review

In fast-moving prose, with a remarkable cast of characters, Davidson pulls back the curtain on her practice of composing music. In addition, Davidson uses the same straightforward language to describe the deeply quiet and interior process of finding compassion, gratitude, forgiveness, and love in a life beset by extraordinary challenges. With honesty, vulnerability and a resistance to making judgments, she invites the reader into her life as a composer, an artist, a daughter, and a mother. Davidson's courage inspires me. She wrote the music she heard even when it was at odds with the classical tastes of the day. She persisted in finding the true story of her birth despite years of being told lies. She risked devoting herself to her music even when it meant living with financial insecurity. Through it all she did not languish in a sense of loss but persisted to consistently reclaim a place of love.

I will keep Davidson's book handy for those times when I fantasize about a redemptive act and need to be reminded about the process of restoration.

—Cathie Harvey, 5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review

I loved how the intimate story was woven with music, how one informed the other. I’m not someone who is drawn to memoirs. Reading this one makes me rethink that perspective. So much to learn about my own life in reading another’s. The writing is poetry. Thank you, Tina for your courage in letting others see you.

—Elise Freed, 5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review

The composer Tina Davidson has given us such a beautiful, poetic, and illuminating memoir of her artistic and personal life. She shares with her readers a rare and unadulterated look into the inner questions, the hopes, the fears, the joys, and the uncertainties of her creative process, while weaving together a complicated tapestry that begins with a childhood full of family secrets and evolves organically through discovery, personal growth and maturity. Hers is a life fully examined and I found her journey both fascinating and deeply satisfying.

—Ralph Jackson, 5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review

Tina Davidson's life story is absorbing but the words she found to describe composing music amazes me. I liked the pace of the book. It unrolled for me like a piece of music. The rhythm changed from page to page...it was a new way of autobiography for me.

—5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review

A fascinating, beautifully written autobiography.

—P.R. Sanders, 5-star Amazon Verified Purchase Review