The Night Lake: A Young Priest Maps the Topography of Grief [Hardcover]

Called such a sad, tough story, but finally so life-affirming, filled with spirit and love by Anne Lamott, this is a raw and intensely affecting memoir by a young priest about loss of a child, its grief and its aftermath, and the hard-won joy that can follow.

Liz Tichenor has taken her newborn son, five weeks old, to the doctor, from a cabin on the shores of Lake Tahoe. She is sent home to her husband and two-year-old daughter with the baby, who is pronounced fine by an urgent care physician. Six hours later, the baby dies in their bed. Less than a year and a half before, Tichenor's mother jumped from a building and killed herself after a long struggle with alcoholism. As a very young Episcopal priest, Tichenor has to preach the Good News, to find faith where there is no hope, but she realizes these terrible parts of her own life will join her in the pulpit.

The Night Lake is the story of finding a way forward through tragedies that seem like they might be beyond surviving and of carving out space for the slow labor of learning to live again, in grief.Nominee for the Northern California Book Award (NCBA) in Creative Nonfiction

The Night Lake is a memoir written as it was lived—in measured, small steps forward . . . A purposeful and artistic offering of what it means to live in the wake of death . . . The generosity of Tichenor’s writing and her faith remind us that her story is our story, too. —Kaethe Schwehn, Christian Century

The memoir is a courageous and thoughtful companion to all those who have suffered a traumatic loss. Her telling exposes both the deep sadness and trauma of deep loss but also reveals the overwhelming rage that often is buried and denied under grief. In doing so, she gives those who have suffered a traumatic loss perlð