In

Limbo

A Memoir

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In Limbo book cover — a freediver suspended in deep green water

InLimbo

A Young Widow's Journey of Sudden Loss and Finding Healing in Unexpected Places

"Proof that loss and hope can share the same space."

The Book

In Limbo

Two months after her wedding, Maya Letellier was asked to make the decision no spouse should ever have to make.

At thirty-five, she sat beside her husband's hospital bed as doctors explained that his rare, aggressive leukemia had left no hope of recovery. The decision to remove life support fell to her.

She said yes.

Searching for stories that reflected her own experience, Maya found very few. There were books about widowhood, but almost none about being young, childless, newly married, and expected to rebuild a life before she had even begun living the one she'd planned.

In Limbo is that missing story — a memoir of sudden loss, and the long, uneven road to healing in the four years that followed. From the intensive care unit to the ocean where she scatters her husband's ashes and later learns how to freedive, from guided imagery therapy to the bewildering reality of dating again. Written with the pacing of literary fiction, she explores the disorienting landscape of early grief with striking honesty and what it means to continue living when the future you imagined disappears overnight.

Told through the sharp eye of a lawyer trained to argue every side and the vulnerability of someone facing the ultimate question with no winning argument, Maya captures grief as it truly unfolds: nonlinear, contradictory, heartbreaking, darkly comedic, and filled with moments that refuse easy resolution.

For anyone navigating the death of a spouse, grieved without a script, or is searching for a story that simply says I felt this too, In Limbo offers something rare: proof that both loss and hope can share in the same space.

Coming to Amazon — Softcover & Ebook, Fall 2026

Early Praise

What Readers Are Saying

"Maya put words to feelings I thought belonged only to me … Her story is devastating, funny, honest, and, most of all, deeply validating. I saw myself in these pages."

Widow, age 38 (lost her husband at 34)

"In Limbo portrays the reality of early grief with remarkable honesty and nuance … Maya does not reduce grief to a series of stages or offer easy lessons about healing. She allows grief to be messy and deeply human."

Therapist Specializing in Grief

"I have never been a widow, but I recognized something of my own experience in Maya's story … I finished the book thinking less about how to 'move on' from loss and more about how we learn to carry what we've lost while making room for what comes next."

Advance Reader

Behind the Cover

The Photograph

A freediver descending into a cenote, light streaming from the surface

The cover shows the author suspended between surface and depth — neither rising nor sinking. It is a fitting image for a book titled In Limbo: a story of living between the future she lost and the one she has yet to find, caught between two worlds, two versions of a life.

Not falling. Not reaching. Just held, for a moment, between two versions of gravity.

A freediver descending through murky green water

Photographs by Marianna Tombini, taken while freediving in a cenote in Mexico.

The Author

Maya Letellier

Maya Letellier is a clean energy and environmental lawyer whose career has helped bring more than $3.5 billion in renewable energy projects to life. She has built a career in fighting for outcomes she believed in — then found herself facing the one fight no argument could win. In Limbo is her debut memoir, written from the space between the clarity of a trained legal mind and the uncertainty of grief.

During the final stages of writing this memoir, Maya spent time in the San Francisco home she and Clément had purchased together. She hoped that being fully immersed in its memories would help portray the emotions from that time in her life — and finishing the book there would let her say a final farewell to the home that had kept safe so many of their moments together.

Maya continues to travel the world with her nine-year-old dog, Miso.

Maya was forty-one when she wrote her memoir.

Get in Touch

Contact

Letellier Publishing mark Letellier Publishing

San Francisco, CA