To face the truth of both the tragedy and the recovery process, Joel deals uniquely with guilt, grief, anxiety, physical and emotional therapy, chronic pain, single-parenting, marriage, writing, and cultural conflict. He examines these phenomena not merely to describe the experience, but to explore, examine, and explain it. This is not a memoir, it is a study of the human mind after trauma. 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.