Black Widow
A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like "Journey" in the Title
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
With her signature warmth, hilarity, and tendency to overshare, Leslie Gray Streeter gives us real talk about love, loss, grief, and healing in your own way that "will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page" (James Patterson).
Leslie Gray Streeter is not cut out for widowhood. She's not ready for hushed rooms and pitying looks. She is not ready to stand graveside, dabbing her eyes in a classy black hat. If she had her way she'd wear her favorite curve-hugging leopard print dress to Scott's funeral; he loved her in that dress! But, here she is, having lost her soulmate to a sudden heart attack, totally unsure of how to navigate her new widow lifestyle. ("New widow lifestyle." Sounds like something you'd find products for on daytime TV, like comfy track suits and compression socks. Wait, is a widow even allowed to make jokes?)
Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God, to facing the fact that life goes on even after the death of the person you were supposed to live it with. While she stumbles toward an uncertain future as a single mother raising a baby with her own widowed mother (plot twist!), Leslie looks back on her love story with Scott, recounting their journey through racism, religious differences, and persistent confusion about what kugel is. Will she find the strength to finish the most important thing that she and Scott started?
Tender, true, and endearingly hilarious, Black Widow is a story about the power of love, and how the only guide book for recovery is the one you write yourself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Palm Beach Post columnist Streeter discusses losing her husband and adopting her son in a bittersweet memoir that approaches heavy subjects with lightness and humor. When Streeter was 44, her husband, Scott, died from a heart attack while they were "making out" as their nearly two-year-old son, Brooks, whom they were in the process of adopting, slept in another room. The book opens on the day of the funeral, as Streeter, who is African-American and Baptist, tries to plan a religiously and culturally inclusive send-off for Scott, who was white and Jewish. The author fondly remembers when she and Scott first met, their quest to adopt, and the joy they felt when Brooks was placed with them as a foster child. She is forthright in discussing her life as a widow: she eats and drinks too much as a way of coping, moves in with her mother for support, has to tell Brooks that his dad is dead, and adopts him as a single parent. "I've climbed out of hell by the tips of my raggedy fingertips," Streeter writes. This hopeful account will appeal to readers who enjoy stories of resiliency and new life chapters.
