Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack. This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." With vulnerability and passion, Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience of love and loss. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING will speak directly to anyone who has ever loved a husband, wife, or child.

JOAN DIDION is celebrated in the worlds of journalism, literature, and film. She is the author of seven previous books of nonfiction and five novels. With her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, she wrote many screenplays including "The Panic in Needle Park" and "A Star Is Born." She lives in New York City.