Getting to Know Death: A Meditation

Bestseller Godwin (Grief Cottage) delivers a powerful and poetic reflection on death, dying, and what constitutes a good life. At age 85, Godwin fell while watering a dogwood tree, breaking her neck and forcing her into a brace for six months. With little to do but meditate on the implications of her injury, Godwin reacquainted herself with a speech she’d given at a literary festival a few years earlier, which included a particularly prescient line: “This is my life, but I may not get to do what I want in it.” Taking that sentiment to heart, she turned her gaze backward, asking herself whether she was happy with the first eight and a half decades of her life. She found answers in memories of relationships both romantic and familial, including her absentee father’s offer to pay for her college so she could escape her abusive stepfather. Godwin also reflects on the deaths of friends and family, including her beloved colleague Rob Neufeld, who edited two volumes of her journals even as he suffered from ALS. Throughout, her tone is curious and vaguely wonderstruck, resulting in an account that’s full of insight and free of platitude. This is a gift. Agent: Moses Cardona, John Hawkins & Assoc. (June)