The prevailing mood of my early and Ann’s mid-fifties has been one of the sense of an ending, surely, but more than that, of a gathering urgency. . . . Fewer of the moments between us feel rehearsed, or forced. And now, just as we had begun to glimpse something like wisdom, glimmering over the horizon, the world smacks the hell out of us. I am strangely grateful, even so, if only for the felt return, in recent days, of the possibility of strong emotion.
    On the day of the terrorist attacks, a man begins writing down things said by his family and friends. The trauma appears to have marooned diarist David Wyatt in a shell-shocked present tense. But as he experiences all of the emotions of that fall, he is visited by deep memories that transform his daily journal-keeping into an "accidental memoir," a narrative that reaches a surprising and moving conclusion on Thanksgiving Day.
    Juggling the roles of English professor, restaurant owner, husband, father, son, and friend, Wyatt finds sustenance at the core of ordinary American life, resources at once so available and so elusive. Passionate about people, books, food, and landscapes present and lost—and absolutely unheroic—the voices summoned here counter the sanctimonious and the sentimental. Wyatt’s elegantly understated memoir reveals how the events of September 11 affected ordinary people and presents this anthology of thoughts, feelings, and interactions in a frank and immediate voice.