Publisher's Synopsis
Something happened last January. I have to live with that. What happened after that is not on me. What happened before that, well, pretty soon here you can decide for yourself. Some stories just need to be told. And some should never be - like this one. I'm telling it anyway. Take a deep breath, you'll see what I mean. Friendly Advice . . . I'm going to recount the day of Curt's funeral here by the hours as they actually happened. Then I'm going to throw in some family chronicles along the way. Pay close attention or you'll be lost - perhaps, as lost as Curt. Want more . . . Normal is about what you think is normal; what's normal to you. But a normal family? What's that? Families are endlessly varied and complex. There are families with the unemployed brother-in-law who won't move out at 38-years-old and the pregnant niece at fifteen; the ones where somebody bad is cheating on somebody nice, and the rest have at least one who is about to get fired or arrested, killed or married. Sorry, was that part redundant? Then amongst all that mayhem are the totally wonderful family members who provide the glue for the erratic, yet utterly predictable, antics of that first group. And together, this combination of sinister, sorry, and sensational actually do amalgamate into a fairly normal family of today. At least now we have a baseline. Anyway, most of this story is true so I've changed the names; you'd do the same. It helps me to think of it as fiction. Sort of. And since nobody really knows everything about everybody - or even everything about anybody - then I believe we'll continue.
