Against the Dying of the Light
A Parent's Story of Love, Loss and Hope
-
- $15.99
-
- $15.99
Publisher Description
How a father's struggle to understand his daughter’s sudden death becomes an inspiring exploration of life.
The sudden death of a child. A personal tragedy beyond description. The permanent presence of an absence. What can come from it? Raw wisdom and defiant hope.
Leonard Fein probes life’s painful injustices in this remarkable personal story. He exposes emotional truths that are revealed when we’re forced to confront one of the toughest questions there is: How can we pick up the pieces of our lives and go on to laugh and to love in the aftermath of grievous loss?
Ruthlessly honest, lyrical and wise, Against the Dying of the Light takes the experience of loss beyond the confines of the personal, illuminating the universal meaning and the hope that can be found in the details of grief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
On January 29, 1996, Fein's 30-year-old daughter, Nomi, collapsed suddenly and died minutes later, leaving behind a husband, a young daughter and a grieving family. In order to come to terms with the loss, Fein (Where Are We?: The Inner Life of America's Jews) narrates his memories of his daughter as well as his own attempts to understand her death. In the first section, which chronicles the first year after the tragedy, Fein interweaves scenes of her death and funeral with vignettes from her life. Nomi's brilliance and her deep love for others and for social justice provide a poignant counterpoint to Fein's own rehearsal of the loss generated by her death. The second section presents Fein's agonizing questions about why his daughter, of all people, had to die, and how we can justify the ways of God to humankind. Certainly Fein experiences a wide range of feelings, from anger and bitterness to acceptance, but he beautifully describes his life without Nomi as "the enduring presence of an absence." In the final section, Fein writes a letter to his five-year-old granddaughter, Liat, offering the stories of her grandparents and her mother and encouraging Liat to choose life and love in the midst of the chaos of the world. Although Fein sometimes engages in self-conscious philosophizing, his honest and searing words powerfully evoke the deeply felt loss of a child.
