The Rules of Inheritance

Claire Bidwell Smith-an only child--was just fourteen years old, when both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other. "I've already come to the conclusion that I will probably be parentless by the time I am thirty," Claire writes. Hurtling toward loss, her every choice carries the weight of a young woman's world, and it feels like a solitary place.

Defying a conventional framework, The Rules of Inheritance [Hudson Street Press; February 2, 2012; ISBN: 978-1-59463-088-0] is told in nonlinear fashion, using the five stages of grief as a window into Claire's experience. The result is a powerful, honest and completely engaging journey that is at once heartbreaking and uplifting. Bookended by her parents' deaths we follow the author as she quits college, travels to Europe, works at high-profile literary jobs, falls in and out of love with an abusive alcoholic, learns how to drink, and then tries to unlearn how to drink. All the while, she searches for normalcy in a turbulent twenty-something world without an anchor. "Why would anyone want to walk into pain?" Claire asks. "But when I did, I found that it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would." Each step brings her closer to finding the meaning of The Rules of Inheritance, and how they will shape her future-as a woman, as a wife, as a mother.

As in the very best memoirs, Claire's superbly resonant writing renders the personal, universal. As a licensed psychotherapist and grief counselor, Claire is well-versed at speaking on the subject of grief from both personal experience and professional expertise.