If You Knew Suzy: A Mother, a Daughter, a Reporter's Notebook
Katherine Rosman
Harper, Apr 19 2011, $15.99
ISBN: 9780061735240

Although she knew the death of her mom was coming shortly, Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Rosman struggled to move passed the demise of Suzy, who at sixty died from lung cancer. To help her come to grips with her loss and better understand how others felt about her intelligent energetic mom, Ms. Rosman turned to people who knew her late mom; that is after a shopping spree with her sister Lizzie to honor their pain in the butt nurturing loving mom. Ms. Rosman talked with the empathetic Haitian doctor at Sloan-Kettering who lost his father to cancer just a few weeks prior to the death of Ms. Rosman's mom. Some people she chatted with thought her quest was a waste of time for her and the other party as neither will know if anything profound surfaced since the source is gone. Ms. Rosman agrees with the assessment on the surface, but her exercise is for herself as grief is customized to the individual. This is an interesting look at a daughter mourning for her loss of her mom though there is little in the way of conflict between the pair. Still readers, who struggle with the loss of a loved one, which reminds survivors of their mortality, will empathize with Ms. Rosman as she provides an engaging look at seeking her mom in death and especially in life from those who knew Suzy.

Harriet Klausner