In this thoughtful collection of narratives, author Joel Peckham explores the transformative power of emotional and physical pain from the vantage point of a husband and parent who lost his wife and a child in an accident thatleft him in chronic distress. Along the way, he fills a need for a brutally honest literary examination of not only grief and suffering, but also of recovery. There are no heroes in these pages, and the author has consciously resisted the mythmaking impulse--that desire to honor the dead and to give tragedy purpose by telling a sad but inspirational story. Instead, the book does a great deal to counter our assumptions about grief and suffering-- assumptions that do damage both to those in pain and those who try to comfort them.