In the wake of death

the long version

In the Wake of Death is a riveting first-person account of how a father learned to live with his teenage daughter's murder. In a case that garnered national attention in 1991, Berlyn Cosman was asleep in the "quiet room" of a post-prom party in a Los Angeles hotel when a young man shot her in the head and killed her. Drawing from journal entries written at the time, Berlyn's father, Mark Cosman, shares the grief, anger and seemingly intractable darkness that accompanied the loss of his child. And, with a focus that is different from most other books that deal with sudden loss and bereavement, he recounts the philosophical and deeply personal odyssey he embarked upon to reestablish a belief system that was torn apart by this unimaginable tragedy. In retracing the painful event of his own childhood, Cosman analyzes how he constructed his beliefs about God and religion, good and evil, guilt and absolution - and discusses how frightening and terribly confusing it is when those beliefs crash headlong into life's tragic realities. He writes of how fear became a new and constant companion after Berlyn's murder and of how he tackled the difficult questions of his own culpability in his daughter's death. It is an intense and, at times, despairing struggle, but ultimately Cosman reaches the personal and moral insights that allow him a new sense of equilibrium and a new way of coping with a future that does not include his daughter.