Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief

Following the death of his only child, Gretchen, in an apartment fire, the author found himself unconsoled by the often simplistic responses to death and mourning of both traditional Christianity and New Age spirituality. So he set out, instead, to find more meaningful words in the world's literature, from Shakespeare to Dostoyevski and Eliot. Taking Macbeth's edict to ""give sorrow words"" for ""the grief that does not speak/ Whispers the o'er fraught heart and bids it break,"" as his credo, Crider began a yearlong journal of recovery in which he sought understanding, consolation and healing in the company of a wide range of stories and poems about death and hope. In simple but elegant prose, he bares his soul and shares his journey eschewing the self-conscious spiritual posing of writers like M. Scott Peck to offer, instead, an excruciatingly honest and textured account of a hard spiritual and emotional journey. (Apr.)