Stations of the Heart: Parting with a Son
Lischer’s only son, Adam, died of rapidly metastasizing melanoma in 2005. He was 33. Ten days later, Adam’s only child, a daughter, was born. While hardly suppressing his own feelings, Lischer resolutely focuses on Adam in this memoir provoked by the not-the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be thing that happened to him. He retreats to Adam’s precarious neonatal days and childhood coping with a mysterious neurological disorder that largely abated in his midteens. Thereafter, Adam blossomed, initially onstage,  then following his mother into law practice. Marrying in his twenties, he’d just won a high-profile murder case for the defendant when a melanoma was discovered and surgically excised. Sixteen months later, the cancer was back; 94 days later, he was dead. He said he’d had a charmed life, and part of what is impressive about his questioning father’s chastely worded, clear-eyed account is that we come to appreciate that. An immensely positive and congenial person, Adam used his time well, completing conversion to Catholicism and using daily prayer rituals with his wife to bless his child in the womb. Quite extraordinary. --Ray Olson