Bret Lott -- the mind of a woman and the knowledge of grief

I just started reading A Song I Knew By Heart, by Bret Lott. It is a phenomenally beautiful book about love and sex, marriage and grief, sin and grace. Lott is able somehow to put himself into the mind of a woman in a way that is unbelievable. He must have a wonderful relationship with his wife, mother, sisters, etc. to be able to understand the heart of a woman and to speak in her voice the way that he does.

The other part of his writing that gets under my skin is his intimate knowledge of grief and the yawning ache of injustice when one who is loved is taken. I have had a couple significant losses in my life of peers who were gone too soon, and mourned and grieved for them, and wondered at how to go on, and yet I walked through the grief, leaned into the pain and came out the other end changed. And when I read someone who knows what that is like, I am surprised that the sympathetic grief I feel as a reader is not over my past losses, but is sharp and pointed as I look ahead to the loss of those that I love right now and wonder, when they are taken, if I shall be able to stand again and walk bravely through the muck and lean into the darkness and come out in the light at the end.

Micah Girl