Book Reporter: The Widower’s Notebook
“THE WIDOWER’S NOTEBOOK is vital reading, a beautiful testament to Joy’s life, and a much-needed window into how one man grapples with the most acute kind of loss. onathan and Joy Santlofer were not a perfect couple by any means. They did their fair share of fighting and annoying one another. But they were content in their lives together, even after a 40-year marriage, and mutually sustained one another’s creative and professional work. They were both solidly middle-aged, with a grown daughter, but always envisioned they’d still have decades left to grow old together. However, that all changed when, in the wake of what should have been a routine, extremely minor surgical procedure, Joy experienced a sudden inability to breathe and died, despite the paramedics’ and emergency room physicians’ best efforts. Jonathan, who had been working in his adjoining studio at the time, initially can’t even process what’s happened, as he alternates between disbelief at … Read more