Companion to an Untold Story (Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction)
“Exquisitely sad but painstaking in its clarity,Companion to an Untold Storyis an effort to understand a friend’s decision to commit suicide. The author lays out the facts and emotions using the structure of an abecedary, as if the simplicity of a child’s alphabet book could bring logic to the terrible puzzle of loss. There is no suspense in the outcome, but reading the book draws you in so intimately that you, too, feel an urgent need to understand why an intelligent, likeable man would choose, with great deliberateness, to kill himself. This is a difficult subject, written extraordinarily well: a winner.”—Susan Orlean, author ofRin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend