By sharing his very personal experience with his father's death, Jim Wooten also examines the myriad ways suicide affects survivors. The first part of the book tries to remember the young, charming man, looked up to by his 10 year old son and the small Southern town of Laurens, SC. Before his every memory will be colored by the way he dies. The author does his best to be honest and even handed but you can feel the love and pride the young boy felt for this man, and how more than 50 years later the "suicide's son" is still asking why.
A shorter part of the book deals briefly with nine questions the author and many survivors grapple with. They include,
Was I not Enough? The Question of Worth
What Could I have Done? The Question of Guilt
What Should They Have Done? The Question of Blame
Shall We Talk About It? The question of Shame
Bitter or Better, the Question of God
Atonement? The Question of Eternity
Is It Contagious? The Question of Fear
What If? The Question of Acceptance
Dr. Wooten is a pastor and you can see his pastor's heart in the way he recalls his father and mother, and himself. He is compassionate with each of them. And this is a book with no easy answers or platitudes. If the first part is a story of loss and struggle, the second part is a story of struggle and hope.

Kato is a compelling character. We meet him while he is in prison for refusing to kill while a soldier in a territorial war between humans and the the MuunWa, the original settlers of a moon system humans have fled to after "losing a planet" (earth). Kato is broken out of prison and we follow him trying to make some kind of life in the society into which he has been released. There are many characters in the book, and each sentence gives so much information about the moons; the society; crime and criminal figures; Kato's family background; the communities and politics of the place; as well as so many characters, that I felt like I needed to take notes to keep it all straight. That detracted a bit from the story, which was a good hero quest. In the second half of the book, a mysterious supernatural story trajectory starts which seemed almost superfluous to the rest of the story. But all in all, I was carried along by the story and was rooting for Kato.

I read this book all in one day on Guyana Independence Day. It follows a family in the capitol, Georgetown, and the dissolution of their lives and family ties as one son, Bird, seeks to bring wealth to himself. His faithful lover, Steph, tells him money will change things and we see this play out in the pain that is brought into the lives of each member of the family. Great characters and family dynamics.