Wondering why

Simply put, Joan Wickersham is a writer, tapping out everything from a novel, "The Paper Anniversary," to short stories, NPR commentaries, even architecture columns.
But it was her most intimate narrative that proved the hardest to write, and took the longest. Last year Wickersham, who lives in Cambridge, published "The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order." Her father had been a caring husband and loving parent. But one morning in 1991, the Connecticut businessman brought his sleeping wife a cup of coffee, sat down in an armchair in the study, and shot himself. Years later, Wickersham set out to learn why, and perhaps to find some peace through that search.
The result was an unconventional memoir, which is organized by indexed chapters. She learned that her father had been in debt from a failed business and had an unhappy childhood, but there was no clear cause. The book also chronicled the upended lives of family and friends and how they were forever changed by his death, and the manner of it. The memoir became a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award.
Wickersham's writing is spare, wrenching, insightful. Here, she recounts her father's last morning alive: "We have to watch him from the outside. He leaves no clues, his whole life is a clue. What is he thinking when he gets up that last morning, showers, and dresses for work? He puts on a blue-and-white striped cotton shirt, a pair of brown corduroys, heavy brown shoes ... He's gone to his dresser and loaded his pockets: change, wallet, keys, handkerchief. Maybe he thinks he's going to work. Or maybe he knows, hopes, that in forty-five minutes he'll be dead."
Wickersham will appear Tuesday, June 30, at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Coolidge Corner.