Seven books about the heartbreak of losing a sibling

Willa C. Richards is the author of The Comfort of Monsters.

She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Truman Capote Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review and she is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers.

At Electric Lit Richards tagged "seven books that showcase the specific horror and heartbreak of loving and losing a sibling," including:

Long Bright River by Liz Moore

With a heart-racing plot and a gorgeously flawed, yet painfully perceptive, narrator, Moore’s novel tackles a heady set of subjects: intergenerational trauma, addiction, sex work, police misconduct, single motherhood, and sisterhood. Set mostly in the Kensington neighborhood of Philly, Long Bright River follows Mickey Fitzpatrick, a beat cop, who undertakes a desperate and at times ill-informed mission to find her missing and long-time heroin-addicted sister. Mickey mines her past as much as her present to understand how both she and her sister ended up in the novel’s present moment. Her search for her sister is set against a disturbing slew of femicides, and like the narrator herself, readers are holding their breath every time another victim is discovered. A beautiful, wrenching book about the ties that bind us and break us.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue