Torch
(Book)

Teresa Rae Wood is a local celebrity in the town of Midden, Minnesota. Her popular radio show, Modern Pioneers!, a kind of hippie Prairie Home Companion, is an eternal embarrassment to her two children, Claire and Josh, and a source of amused pride to her common-law husband, Bruce. When Teresa summons Claire and Josh home unexpectedly, they are floored by her news: Teresa, only thirty-eight, is dying of cancer. In a few weeks, she is gone. Now the mundane irritations and small betrayals of family relationships loom dangerously large, as Claire, Josh, and Bruce- isolated in grief just when they need one another most- seek comfort elsewhere. To his children's disbelief, Bruce quickly marries their neighbor from the farm next door. Claire obstinately carries the torch of her mother's memory, while Josh drifts beyond her reach- until he issues a warning cry for help that she cannot ignore. Strayed has a pitch-perfect ear for the large passions and careless cruelties that family members inflict in times of crisis. Above all, Torch is about siblings thrown unawares into adulthood and the beautiful terrors of learning how to keep living. Grounded in the everyday particulars of life in a small town, leavened by earthy humor, this book presents the saga of a family coming to terms with death--a tale of love and loss, grief and redemption set in rural Minnesota.