Reading Into Grief
"I had written a memoir three years earlier and couldn't find a publisher...I was burnt out. At 29, I contemplated retirement. I wasn't only disappointing myself. My dad, Lawrence J. Epstein, has always been my mentor and biggest cheerleader. A retired English professor who has published ten books on subjects ranging from comedy teams to folk singers to Jewish affairs, he and I often spent hours talking shop. Though I'd had some success with newspaper and magazine publishing, a book contract for me was our shared goal. Five days into my soul-searching trip, my mother-in-law called my hotel room-- at 3am -- to say that my then 64-year-old, previously healthy father had suffered a heart attack and needed emergency sextuple bypass surgery."
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