Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt

This is a short sweet elegiac memoir about Roger Rosenblatt's family.  Roger lost his 38 year old daughter Amy to a heart attack owing to a very rare heart condition that no one knew she had.  Amy was a doctor and a mother to three small children.  Roger and his wife move in with their widowed son-in-law to help raise their grandchildren, and so goes Roger's very sweet and sad story of his new life and his effort to understand his grief and keep himself whole for the sake of his three grandchildren.

Roger Rosenblatt is an accomplished author.  He has written for the Washington Post and Time magazine as well as several books of fiction and non-fiction.  I did not feel this story was anything surprising or earth shaking.  There were no new revelations about grief or death.  I think when I got it from the library, it had been so advertised that I was expecting something like writing miracles. I expected to crack open the BIG STORY!

So no miracles, no revelatory writing or insights.  Really just simple truth. The only thing the author seems to be able to do for his growing grandchildren is to make their morning toast.  And so he does.  Life goes painfully on.