The best memoirs by daughters grieving their fathers

As contradictory as it sounds, when I read this book, the ache of grief that lives in my bones both intensified and diminished. Though the circumstances of our fathers’ deaths are not at all the same, somehow the specifics of Wickersham’s grief after her father’s death by suicide—the confusion, the obsessive need to make sense of it, the search to understand herself in its wake—all felt like indelible strands that bound her story to mine.

I love memoirs with structures that reflect the truth of a particular experience, and Wickersham’s brilliant, non-linear approach, in the form of an index that tells this story in pieces, mirrors her attempt to find order in the chaotic mess of devastating loss. I cried often as I read this book, but I also felt so deeply the love, beauty, and resilience woven through its pages. 

I loved this book for its intimacy and compactness. It’s less than 100 pages long, and yet Adichie manages to contain so poignantly the splintered pieces of herself that must be sorted after her father dies 5500 miles away, completely out of her reach from where she’s locked down during Covid.

I recognized myself in Adichie’s efforts to find language for what is so often unspeakable, including something as seemingly simple as what verb tenses to use after someone dies; to describe the pain as it inhabits her body in unexpected ways; to reconcile the moments of laughter that then dissolve to tears; to somehow undo what can’t be undone. Most remarkable, though, is how, in navigating the grief of his death, Adichie brings her beloved father to life and invites me to love him too.

I often immerse myself in nature when life gets hard. Helen MacDonald takes that impulse to a whole other level in this gorgeously written book about her obsession with training a goshawk named Mabel after her life is upended by the sudden death of her father. I loved how the intensity of training this wild and dangerous bird of prey matched, in so many ways, the intensity of navigating grief. I don’t think MacDonald would recommend her path as one for everyone, but as someone who knew falconry and whose father had taught her to seek out her nature obsessions, this was the coping journey she needed. 

I was enraptured by this story, which could never be defined as just one thing—memoir, musing on nature, falconry guide, grief meditation…all its parts are what make it wholly memorable.

I was both educated and enraged by Danticat’s grief story about the extensive immigrant injustices in this country and the entrenched systemic rights abuses. But the intimate family story at its core made this memoir one of my favorites. I was profoundly moved by her exquisite portrayal of her relationships with the two cherished men at the center of this book and her life—her father, Mira, and her uncle Joseph, a second father figure.

Danticat’s dedication to unravel the tragic string of circumstances that led to her uncle’s death in detention after he immigrated from Haiti only months before her father died from Pulmonary Fibrosis left me in awe. She demonstrates how, in retracing these circumstances, her book has become another kind of grief site for her personally and for the community. One that I have been grateful to visit to find companionship in loss.  

I found a kindred spirit in Laura Carney when I first read her memoir about her inspired six-year quest to complete her father’s bucket list, thirteen years after he was killed by a distracted driver. Her story echoed a main reason I set out to write mine: “I want my dad’s life to matter.”

I loved how Carney, in detailing her many adventures, leaned into writing about the expansiveness of her grief while also celebrating the largeness of who her father was. Her honesty about confronting her fears and mental health challenges, uncovering family secrets, and finding her own resilience along the way struck a powerful chord in me. This book continues to teach me how who I am and what I do can be instrumental in fulfilling my father’s legacy.