Wrongful Death: A Memoir - Hardcover

An enduring contribution to the literature of grief. Starred Review. The memoir recounts the events preceding Elliot's death and leading up to and beyond the legal resolution. But its power lies in the writers anger and her grief, and in her all-consuming determination: her book is a moving and extended meditation on moral obsession. Wrongful Death is, most of all, an unwavering, impassioned inquest as Gilbert attempts to determine the immediate cause of her husbands medical termination.

In February 1991, Elliot Gilbert, a 60-year-old professor of English, went into hospital for a routine prostate operation. Hours later, he was pronounced dead in the recovery ward. In this book, Gilbert's widow describes the shock and grief into which she and her children were plunged as they struggled to come to terms with his death. Her major focus is on the process of discovery through which they began to unravel the mystery of her husband's sudden death.