Joan Didiens: The Year of Magical Thinking

My father struggled with writer's block. He smoked compulsively, and I could tell as a young child that he was self-medicating with cigarettes. My mother is a rock solid person. You can always count on her in a crisis. In Joan Didiens, the year of magical thinking, my mother appears in one of the opening chapters of that book as the first person Joan calls when John dies. And I don't think it's an accident that she called my mother.