74 Words

Bestselling author John Kenney writes a luminous, powerful memoir about the long tail of grief—the ways it hides, the ways it shapes us, and what it means, finally, to mourn someone fully, even if it takes half a lifetime to find the words.

When John Kenney’s mother died, the Boston Globe ran her obituary. It was just 74 words long. He was twelve years old, and no one explained grief to him. So he did what children do: he kept moving, kept growing, kept living, burying the loss somewhere deep and unexamined for nearly fifty years.

After writing his bestselling novel about an obituary writer, I See You’ve Called in Dead, Kenney couldn’t stop thinking about the impossibility of summing up a person’s life in that small format, in just 74 words. And once he started expanding his mother’s story, he couldn’t stop. 74 Words is a son’s reckoning with memory, the mother he lost, and the woman he never got a chance to know. It’s the story of a man who ultimately allows himself to grieve.