Memorial Days: A Memoir

Pulitzer-winning novelist Brooks (Horse) delivers a moving and lyrical account of the years following her husband’s death. In 2019, Brooks’s 60-year-old husband, Tony Hurwitz, died of a heart attack. Three years later, Brooks spent several months on the secluded Flinders Island off the coast of Australia, finally “unclenching... the soul” and allowing herself to grieve. The narrative focuses mostly on the period between Tony’s death and that sojourn, cataloging the hectic months during which Brooks dealt with tax problems, a lack of health insurance, and a legal fight over her youngest son’s guardianship. Tender flashbacks recount the couple’s courtship at Columbia Journalism School in the 1980s, their travels across the globe as foreign correspondents, and their decision to settle in Massachusetts, start a family, and concentrate on writing books. Brooks concludes by imploring readers to spend time processing their trauma, crediting the experience with her resolution to make “the life I have as vivid and consequential as I can.” Brooks’s spare yet forceful prose and admirable determination to stare pain in the face go a long way toward achieving that goal. Readers reckoning with the loss of a loved one will find wisdom in these pages. Agent: Kristine Dahl, CAA. (Feb.)