This Is How You Say Goodbye: A Daughter's Memoir
When Loustalot was eight years old, her charismatic father, Lou, made her a promise it would be impossible to keep: to take his only child on a trip around the world. As bad luck would have it, Lou was HIV positive. It would be but three short years before he would succumb to AIDS. Fifteen years later, still devastated by thoughts of the voyage that never was, Loustalot embarked on her own journey to make peace with her father and herself. In this moving memoir, her first book, Loustalot alternates reminiscences of her dad with highlights of her trip, including Stockholm, Angkor Wat, and Paris. She paints a portrait of a man stoic in the face of quiet suffering (he was married for several years before revealing to his family that he was gay). By turns sweet (sharing white and tan sundaes with Lou at the local creamery) and heart-wrenching (witnessing him collapse into tears in the final months of his life) Loustalot writes with courage and candor about bidding her beloved father a final farewell. --Allison Block