Zig-Zagging, A Memoir: Loving Madly, Losing Badly—How Ziggy Saved My Life

In this inspirational memoir, Wilson, author of the cartoon strip Ziggy (a job he inherited from his father), relates a life filled with wondrous memories and profound struggles. While growing up, Ziggy served as a means for father and son to “draw out our thoughts and feelings about each other.” But years later, Wilson's leg was crushed in a car accident, his wife died at age 44 of breast cancer, leaving Wilson with their two sons, and his father—both mentor and hero to Wilson—also had a serious illness. Immobilized by depression, Wilson's faith failed him, and he concluded that “the mercy of God [was] an apparent fiction.” Wilson struggled for peace and truth with Ziggy by his side. His ultimate rescuer was the gift of a journal in which he recorded his feelings and thoughts. With ideas like imagining Moses as the first Superman, Wilson delights with fresh, well-considered insights, while the Ziggy cartoons reproduced here put both the character and his creator in a moving light. (Mar.)