THE FIELD

Memory, grief, and self-reflection mingle in debut author Garza’s account of the death of her sibling.

On an initially ordinary day in 1978, the author’s 9-year-old sister, Virginia “Gina” Garza, died in a car accident, along with her cousin Connie, which upended the lives of the author’s tightknit family. Four decades later, the 52-year-old author recounts her experience with survivor’s guilt, dissociation, and spirituality, as she undertook a long journey of reconstructing her own identity without Gina. “A world without memory is a world of the present,” says Garza. “At ten, I pray for only memories because the present is filled with loneliness. At fifteen, I pray that I won't forget what she sounded like….At forty, I give up trying to replace her.” She includes testimonials of various family members alongside her own recollections, which paint a portrait of her sister during her life and the fragmented moments surrounding her sudden demise. Throughout, the author illustrates, in observant, poetic prose, the reverberating effects that grief can have on a life, and the many ways that her family has coped with it, often through Christian faith. Garza links her childhood trauma to other moments of profound loss, such as the dissolution of a toxic relationship and the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks. As she does so, she examines her own protective mechanisms and peels back layers of guilt and sorrow to tenderly uncover revelations about herself. She draws on multiple outside sources, including the work of Rebecca Solnit, the words of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, to explore how people understand and interact with death, and how they ultimately learn to accept it as a constant companion.

An achingly vulnerable, elegantly worded meditation on grief and recovery.