When Death Changes Life: The Danny Tompkins Short Stories

The six Danny Tompkins short stories explored teenage grief at the death of a parent. They are collected here in one volume. The stories follow 13-year-old Danny as he comes to grips with the death that changed his family. Decades later the adult Daniel re-lives many of the scenes from those few traumatic days, of the next school year, of how his surviving parent coped, of how Danny and his siblings coped, and how in his later years he found a release of his grief in writing poetry, as well as re-living the events.

Each story focuses on a different memory or situation. After Danny's school years, the stories show Daniel in mid-adult years and then later, about to enter his senior adult years.