Diurnal

A Short Story

A deeply moving and elegantly written short story, Diurnalpaints a vivid portrait of a family haunted by loss and shaped by grief.

After a fatal accident takes place in their backyard, Susan and Brian decide to try, one last time, to start a family. Against the backdrop of unsettling signs and omens, Susan bonds with her unborn child, recording her hopes for him in the diaries she has been keeping since childhood. When the pregnancy ends in tragedy, Susan struggles to keep memories of her son alive, but in doing so sacrifices the relationship she was meant to have with her daughter. Thirty years later, her daughter must come to terms with the consequences—deciding who she really is and how she wants to carry forward her family’s dreams and memories.