It's been said there is nothing worse than the death of a child. When Liz Tichenor and her husband, Jesse--both in their late 20s--experienced the devastating loss of their son, Fritz, when he was just 40 days old, that idea became shatteringly profound reality.
"There was no making sense of what was before me," Tichenor writes in The Night Lake: A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief, as she painstakingly traces harrowing details that begin on a cold day in January 2014. Baby Fritz exhibits symptoms of an unspecific nature. The young family of four--Liz, Jesse, their inquisitive two-year-old daughter, Alice, and infant Fritz--share a tiny cabin in Camp Galilee, a remote Episcopal retreat center located on a sloping hill just east of beautiful Lake Tahoe. With medical care miles away, Liz drives Fritz--crying excessively and expelling a small amount of bile-colored spit-up--to the closest urgent care facility.
This launches the harrowing story of Liz's immense difficulty grappling with being an inconsolable wife and mother and, at the same time, a freshly ordained Episcopal minister, "someone professionally and academically trained to be present at heartrending times." Tichenor's courageous memoir is an exquisitely crafted, painfully beautiful chronicle of loss. She articulates the immensity of her feelings and emotions with unbridled candor that, at times, is difficult to read, but ultimately reveal moments of hope and grace. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines