She whispered to her mother, who relayed the message that her daughter wanted to give Hart a kiss.Īfter that sweet, simple kiss, Hart stopped writing in his yellow binder. Hart and Corman were attending a New Year’s gathering at a friend’s farm, when a child, about 3 years old, approached Hart. He wrote for five weeks until a supportive community swept him to a new phase in his journey. He stuffed the 8.5-by-11-inch notebook with pages until overflowing. Although he typically draws, Hart only wrote. Hart began scribbling memories in a yellow vinyl binder. She died from an unidentified cause when she was almost 2 years old. In this place, the family soaked up moments together until that morning in November when Rosalie did not wake up. “The moon in Florida follows roughly the same path as the sun - from east to west in the Southern sky,” writes Hart in “Rosalie Lightning.” “I don’t remember it being so reliable in New York.” On their bike rides, Hart recalls watching the moon with Rosalie. Hart and Rosalie often visited the downtown library and the Northeast Duck Pond together. In their first house in Gainesville, Hart writes, Rosalie had “room to run” and streets safe for biking. The work, more than three years in the creating, topped The New York Times bestsellers list for graphic novels in January 2016. Hart chronicled the tragedy in “Rosalie Lightning,” which grew out of the journal he wrote in the months that followed. Two months later, in the midst of settling into their new town and beginning the Sequential Arts Workshop, the couple suffered an unexpected and unimaginable loss - the death of their child. Gainesville seemed the perfect place for Hart to realize his dream of starting a school that would combine instruction in cartooning and other visual media storytelling techniques. So in September 2011, the couple, along with their 21-month old daughter, Rosalie, uprooted and headed south, back to Gainesville, where they had met and fallen in love. But the appeal of joining a vibrant arts community in a city more affordable and family friendly also was alluring to Hart and his wife and fellow artist, Leela Corman. For graphic novelist Tom Hart, life in New York City offered all the opportunities of one of the world’s top art centers.

Rosalie lightning by tom hart