I'm a two time widow, so I've read just about every widow memoir that's been published in recent memory. The 9/11 widow memoirs are an interesting study because they represent a distinct subgroup of widows who have a number of factors in common: a sudden loss of a spouse; intense public attention, and (usually) a lack of an intact body to bury/cremate.  However, the similarities really end there. For example, Marian Fontana, whose firefighter husband died at Ground Zero wrote Widows Walk, which covers a similar time period as the Abigail Carter's Alchemy of Loss, also a 9/11 widow.

Fontana's book; however, is of such a different tone and written to such a different depth than Carter's one wonders how such a similar event could produce such entirely different reactions. It is this that makes Carter's book difficult to read. I originally picked up Carter's book because of the title seem both hopeful and promising, hinting at revelations, personal growth, maybe even drastic life changes. And although certainly Carter's life, and the life of her two young children changes dramatically as a result of their searing and awesome loss, if there is personal growth persent in Carter's personal life, she doesn't adequately describe it to convince the reader.

For example, much of the book's tone is defensive, explaining why Carter made the decisions she did particularly in regards to her relationship with her own mother and her in-laws. Clearly there was difficulty in these relationships, perhaps even greater than she describes, but it isn't clear what Carter is trying to convey as a result of these detailed accounts. It left me feeling I had accidentally eavesdropped on a personal phone call made to a friend, or hacked into her email.

It can't be an easy thing to spend weeks, months, even years writing about an extremely painful perion of life. Carter should of course be commended for her courage in surviving the tragedy and for caring enough to get the story down. However, I would have liked to have heard less about why she was right in an argument and more about how she changed as the result of her experience.