In 2002, Philip Connors left a plum position at the Wall Street Journal for a New Mexico fire lookout. Fire Season, his account of that experience, was a remarkable reflection on work, nature and the appeal of solitude. It also touched on his own demons, the subject of this powerful memoir, All the Wrong Places.
As a young man in the '90s settling into his first big job but still finding his way, Connors lives with contradiction: the son of a Minnesota pig farmer, he's now a New York journalist. He's out of place as a liberal in the Journal newsroom, he's white in a very black Brooklyn neighborhood, he pursues romance with the wrong women. But his younger brother Dan's suicide in 1996 at age 22, when Philip has newly arrived in New York, is the memoir's emotional core. It has colored Philip's every experience and prompted a search for clues to his brother's state of mind. He talks to Dan's friends, mines family history, recounts stories from his own memory, studies the autopsy report. Six years after his brother's death and just before he starts his fire season, Phil finally hears the wrenching but unprovable story of what may have driven his brother's despair.
On its surface, All the Wrong Places is the story of a lost young man's search for explanations and stands as a moving account of grief. Through his writing, Connors eventually "finds a place to put it so that it wouldn't eat me alive," recognizing the futility of resolution and the necessity of connection. --Jeanette Zwart, freelance writer and reviewer