Flirting With Extinction: Collected Essays & Stories
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About
One night of wild teenage exuberance causes a chain reaction of events that does not end, it just keeps on going, no one has been able to stop it. Joanna Kadish’s family is shattered after her son’s reckless act. In confronting their tragedy, she uncovers the enduring trauma inherited from Holocaust survivors.
Several essays examine the detritus of a marriage after stints of frenzied family camping trips, endurance cycling, baseball, and finally, partner swapping: all these stratagems employed to keep a husband’s attention from wandering and keep him focused on keeping the marriage and family afloat—all of it proving useless. As a married couple, they kept repeating the same tired lines while everything around them fizzled and burned, and their children proved unable to extricate themselves from difficult situations, intervention only made it worse. Flirting With Extinction examines how generational trauma reverberates across time, especially in the wake of unbearable loss.
Praise for this book
"These imaginative essays and stories, told in varying perspectives, are pulled together by the impulse to test our limits—whether by swimming with sharks in icy waters, going outside the traditional “rules” of a marriage, or taking one more hit of fentanyl. All the pieces ask the same question: how much is too much? Kadish looks in unwavering honesty at the heartbreaking consequences of one wrong move, yet she reveals no easy answers."
“Pushes mortality to the very edge with broncos, sharks, and drugs, coming together to create a disturbing picture of American life.”