When John and Ricky Ryrie’s third child dies just fifty-seven hours after he is born they are devastated. As they try to grieve, help their children Paul and Biscuit grieve for their brother, they begin to uncover secrets and long harbored guilt in their relationship making them wonder how healthy their relationship was before Simon was born and if their marriage can weather this storm. Paul becomes the victim of bullying at his middle school and Biscuit begins cutting school, usually in an attempt to follow another culture’s death and funeral ritual for her brother, for whom a funeral was never held. Into their midst arrives Jess, John’s daughter born out of wedlock when he was in college, a daughter with whom he and his family have had very little contact with for the past eight years. Also into their lives comes nineteen-year-old Gordie Joiner, who is suffering from the grief of losing his father just a few months earlier to lung cancer. As each person copes with their grief, and with their culpability in hurting others, each comes to terms with their grief and comes to terms with their place, and responsibility that comes with being part of a family.
The Grief of Others is not a happy book, but glimmers of hope do shine through. Each character seems separate from the others and no one has very much to ground themselves, each has his or her own secrets, making them at first blush seem bland and banal, but upon closer inspection, each is struggling with his or her own demons and how to connect with their family and with the world at large. Isolating at first, the characters slowly draw strength from the thing they each know best, illustrating the redemptive nature of family and its power to heal and forgive.
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