The Suicide Index

Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “Wickersham has journeyed into the dark underworld inside her father and herself and emerged with a powerful, gripping story.” —The Boston Globe One winter morning in 1991, Joan Wickersham’s father shot himself in the head. The father she loved would never have killed himself, and yet he had. His death made a mystery of his entire life. Who was he? Why did he do it? And what was the impact of his death on the people who loved him? Using an index—the most formal and orderly of structures—Wickersham explores this chaotic and incomprehensible reality. Every bit of family history, every encounter with friends, doctors, and other survivors, exposes another facet of elusive truth. Dark, funny, sad, and gripping, at once a philosophical and a deeply personal exploration, The Suicide Index is, finally, a daughter’s anguished, loving elegy to her father.