A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do

March 1, 2019
A widowed father's recovery from grief forms the framework of Fromm's touching novel.Young carpenter and cabinetmaker Taz and his wife, Marnie, are just scraping by financially as they attempt to rehab the dilapidated house they share in rural Montana and eagerly await the birth of their first child. And then Marnie dies in childbirth. Taz, dazed by sorrow, is left to raise baby Midge without Marnie, though frequently conjuring her ghost for conversation. His parents are no help: They've moved to New Zealand, and Taz and his father don't get along. But Taz doesn't have to raise his daughter alone. He has a cohort of caring friends and neighbors, and he gradually forms a friendship with Marnie's mother, Lauren, who flies in as often as possible to spend time with her granddaughter. Most significant is his growing relationship with the college student and part-time bartender, nicknamed "Elmo" for the resemblance of her hair to that of the Muppet, who babysits Midge. The novel leapfrogs through the first year and a half of Midge's life, landing occasionally on significant days like Christmas, Halloween, and Midge's birthday but more often exploring the texture of seemingly ordinary days as an uncertain Taz veers between despair and hope. Though readers may be appalled by how often Taz exposes Midge to the dangers of his workplaces or the mountain lakes where he takes her swimming before she can even crawl, Fromm (The Names of the Stars, 2016, etc.) eschews suspense in favor of a close study of the messy process of rebuilding a life. He pays loving attention to the details of Taz's work and to the place that is as vital to him as any human being.A compassionate and unsentimental look at one confused young man's path through loss.

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April 29, 2019
Fromm (As Cool As I Am) pulls at the heart strings with the poignant tale of a father, who just having lost his wife in childbirth, must quickly learn to raise his infant daughter, Midge, alone. Trapped in the Montana fixer-upper he and his wife were renovating, new father Taz isolates himself from friends and family, struggling through late night feedings, dirty diapers, and the wrenching loss of his wife, Marnie. Her ghost haunts his thoughts, and his conversations with her are just as present as the ripped-up floor boards, unfinished bathroom, and demolished kitchen. A carpenter by trade, Taz can’t bring himself to continue working on their house, but he can’t leave it and move on, either. As the novel tracks Taz’s first two years as a single father, readers see him gradually awaken from the darkness; he begins restoring the old home again, forming new relationships with his late wife’s mother and his young, eccentric new babysitter, and eventually realizing he must find a way to build a new life for himself and his daughter. Full of gorgeous descriptions of the wild landscape of Montana, Fromm’s novel draws the reader in with a colorful cast of characters who bring hope and light to Taz’s life again. Fans of emotional family dramas will find much to love.

April 1, 2019
Young Montanans Taz and Marnie are planning a life together. Fixing up an old house, they are also expecting their first child and counting down the days. Then the unthinkable happens and Marnie dies in childbirth: baby Midge is born healthy, and Taz, a talented but taciturn woodworker, is thrust wholly unprepared into struggling single parenthood. This deeply emotional story is in some ways a simple one of death, birth, grieving, and a long, slow climb toward recovery. The support group?friend Rudy, babysitter and eventual love interest Elmo, Marnie's mother, and others?is brought to vivid life, and the relationships between the characters feel honest and true. Taz's need to work is a key part of the plot, and Fromm details the cabinetmaking with poetic care and a level of detail that will delight some readers and test others. His character's self-absorption, which feels utterly right in the early stages, wears somewhat thin by the book's end. But the best parts are simply magical as Fromm renders indelible images with heartbreaking precision in beautiful, lyrical prose.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)