Without Jenny is Published!

Please join me on one of two Sundays, April 22 or April 29, to celebrate the publication of my novel of grief and recovery, Without Jenny, by Koehler Books! We’ll sip and schmooze and I’ll spend a little time speaking about the novel and my own experience as a bereaved father. I’ll read selected excerpts and do a signing.

Without Jenny chronicles the trans-formations an upwardly striving San Francisco Jewish family experiences after the sudden, accidental death of ten-year-old Jenny, their oldest. An emotional story told with honest and haunting detail, the novel is an intimate portrait of two people of good will in a loving marriage that gets stretched to the breaking point by the unspeakable.

“This novel draws us intimately close to the mysteries of imperfect love and of human resilience.” —Catherine Brady, winner of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction

The writing of course is deeply informed by my daughter Eva’s death  in 1997. What does it even mean to “recover” from such a disaster? The novel form lets me communicate the daily experience of grief; it’s cadences, sensibilities and contradictions; how the world is turned inside out. These characters ricochet between hope and despair, love and pain, fear and resolve, yet somehow find a way forward.

“Mark Gunther offers his readers a meditation on strength, courage, and the healing power of family.” —Rabbi Naomi Levy, author of Einstein and the Rabbi

Please join me for a reading and celebration of  Without Jenny’s publication! I’d love to sign your copy!

 Robin’s Cafe,  Sunday, April 22 at 4pm  The book will be on sale for $20, with $5 going to the ODC school’s Thea Anderson Fund.

Congregation Beth Sholom, Sunday, April 29 at 4pm  The book will be on sale for $20, with $5 going to Beth Sholom’s grief support efforts.