American Widow

George Gene Gustines

Publishers Weekly

Torres's husband, Eddie, started work at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center on September 10, 2001. The next day, Alissa became one of the "terrorist widows" of 9/11. American Widow chronicles Alissa's first year without Eddie-including the birth of their child, two months after his death. It also traces their courtship, marriage and the last few days of Eddie's life. This deeply personal book is at times raw, angry, bleak and lyrical. The best prose comes out of Torres's moments of pure, lonely grief, which punctuate her confusing and at times horrifying experiences with various aid agencies, family members, friends and strangers. Choi's art is reminiscent of the work of Andi Watson and Craig Thompson, and complements Torres's writing by emphasizing the ordinary in Alissa's extraordinary circumstances. Torres and Choi do best with the confusion and shock that come with a sudden death, laying out scene after scene without quite connecting them-just as events seem to go on and on without meaning when one has lost someone important. What this book lacks in technique and narrative drive, it makes up in its heartfelt look at the universality in one woman's loss. (Sept.)

Library Journal

Few deaths are easy on either the departed or the survivors-how, now, the excruciatingly public deaths of the 9/11 tragedy? For Eddie Torres, it was all over 18 seconds after he took matters into his own hands and jumped from the North Tower, where he'd just started working at Cantor Fitzgerald. For Alissa Torres, Eddie's death and then her own life were out of her hands. Eddie just kept dying over and over, thousands of times throughout the year afterward as seemingly hundreds of misguided cogs in the 9/11 relief juggernaut tried to help the young widow facing motherhood. Wading through grief, parenting, missed connections, misinformation, and paperwork, Alissa finally found solace in revisiting Hawaii, where she and Eddie had vacationed so happily; then in recounting her experience for magazines, and finally in writing this sensitive and appalling graphic work about her year of a thousand Eddie deaths. Her tragedy of errors inspires anger on her behalf, although the story is calmly and beautifully told. Choi's simple and attractive line art is set off by turquoise wash, yielding to a full-color photo at the end when Alissa embraces her life anew. Recommended for all adult collections and readers high school and up.
—Martha Cornog

Kirkus Reviews