What happens when life doesn’t just break—it begins in pieces?

Dark humor, tough truths, and the audacity to keep going.

Release date: January 29, 2026

“Sheri’s story is, at once, hopeful, heartbreaking, and engaging. I am struck by its openness and stark telling of experiences that could have produced a very different result. However, true to her nature that I’ve admired for years, Sheri finds her way to hope and love through her resilient and determined spirit. As a colleague who has admired Sheri’s work with students for years, I can now see why her students are drawn to her and love her deeply. I’m so grateful for her courage to share her life with us. I’m inspired by Sheri’s determination to soar boldly rather than allow circumstances to anchor her in sadness or pain. I hope that everyone who reads Sheri’s story may experience healing and the courage to boldly sing their song.”

–Adam Wurst, Music Educator, Author ‘Executive Function Skills for Teens: How to Coach Your Teen Toward Confidence, Independence, and Real-World Success’

From a childhood that overlapped Barack Obama’s in Hawai’i—both shaped by the island’s rhythms, and the spirit of ‘ohana—Sheryl Hauk takes readers through fragments of her story. Secrets, medical storms, broken LEGO models, missing pets, suspicious train rides, and classroom chaos. As she turns from the podium to the page, she shares a layered story of survival, resilience, and the power of creativity.

With honesty, dark humor, and hope, she reflects on her journey through courtrooms, choir rooms, hospital rooms, and state capitols. Even in the darkest places, her wit refuses to be silent, making room for resilience and healing through teaching, advocacy, creativity and music.

This story is for survivors, parents, teachers, dreamers—and for anyone who has ever tried to understand silence, rebuild their own story, or stand by someone piecing their life back together. It offers hope, meaning, and proves how the most mismatched pieces can be snapped together into something meaningful.

Not perfect, but beautiful.

“I just finished reading and I’m honestly just so inspired. Sheryl’s story is incredible and she shares it with such courage, honesty, and humor. It has left me in awe. every chapter shows just how resilient she is and her ability to turn pain into strength and something beauteous. What struck me most is how much of the same spirit I recognized from high school. She poured that same energy into me and my artistic journey. I feel grateful beyond words that she continued to support me on my own artistic path. and her story makes me want to keep going.”

–Danny Kornfeld, Broadway Actor

Sheryl Hauk

Sheryl Hauk is a retired music educator whose forty-one-year career left an indelible mark on generations of students. A quarterfinalist for the Grammy Teacher of the Year and recipient of MSVMA’s Lifetime Achievement honor, she is known for her ability to turn classrooms and choirs into communities of belonging.

Her ensembles have sung everywhere from Carnegie Hall to the Michigan and Hawaii State Capitols, and her passion for music has inspired students across the country. Sheryl continues to share her voice through writing, advocacy, and the conviction that creativity can help us build meaning from even the most broken pieces.

“Picking up the pieces of a shattered childhood is a painstakingly slow, messy and individual process. Sheryl uses wit and humor to share her raw emotional journey and to relay that no matter how many broken pieces you may have endured, there IS a way to put them all back into a beautiful life full of love and hope for the future. Knowing Sheryl for 40 years and talking about her story and the struggles she went through, I highly recommend this genuinely reflective and tender book.”

–Donna Schick, Author

“Sheryl’s willingness to share her truth - raw, painful, and unvarnished - as well as her winding path of triumph, courage and resilience is nothing short of inspiring. Her trauma and enduring strength are hers alone but her lessons are for all of us.”

–Greg Jasperse, Singer, Composer, Music Educator

“Piece by Piece is a compelling read full of lessons taught and lessons learned. With bracing candor and original humor Hauk crafts the story of an authentic life, a story of survival, resilience and hope.

Hauk is a teacher, but also a lifelong student of people, power and perseverance. Readers will see her soul and parts of their own.”

–John Wisely, Emmy-award winning journalist
and podcaster.

“For as long as I can remember, one of my all-time favorite quotes is one spoken by Nelson Mandela… ‘Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.’ Fast forward to one of my very favorite people, Sheryl Hauk. Her personal, painful story lives and breathes those words a million times over. The way she has so masterfully pieced together the extreme and tragic details of her life and relationships from childhood to adulthood delivers a story you don’t want to stop reading. You will laugh, you will cry and you will wish you had been there for her kicking asses and taking names. But she didn’t and doesn’t require that from any of us… she just needs us to hear her. Hear her story. Out of the fear and darkness… into the courage and light. Sheryl is Triumphant! And ever always the educator, her story will teach many of us to face our own adversity and hardship and to speak up! Piece by piece, brick by brick, Lego piece by Lego piece… even if you step on one of those damn pieces in the dark.”

–Karen Newman, Singer, Voice of the Detroit Red Wings