The Long Goodbye: A Memoir

From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love.

What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of 55, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow.

In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief - its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies - an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.