Arcadia Public Library

We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death. O'Farrell discusses the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. From a childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive, through her ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers. Seventeen encounters at different...

A collection of four essays on death, dying, and the afterlife.

"An unexpected, poignant, and personal account of loving and losing pets, exploring the singular bonds we have with our companion animals, and how to grieve them once they've passed"--

The day twelve-year-old Stanly finds a finger bone growing into a skeleton in his yard everything changes--his seven-year-old sister Miren adopts the skeleton, which only children can see, as a friend and playmate, and as her health continues to deteriorate Stanly blames the skeleton and tries to drive it away, although it is the only thing that seems to give Miren any joy.

On the surface Petrone had it all: a family, a budding writing career, a successful marriage. But she was desperately lonely, and dealing with the life and death of her alcoholic mother and the ghosts of her own suicidal past. Here she takes us on her journey from loss into renewed life. Writing from a universally understood place of struggle, Petrone provides a timeless reminder to world-weary readers that, just as birth follows death, light does...