Humanity Is Trying: Experiments in Living with Grief, Finding Connection, and Resisting Easy Answers

“A truly beautiful, wise, raw, subtle book." —Robert MacFarlane, author of Underland

My sister and I are driving south toward Graceland in her beat-up red Saturn, both in need of refuge, both running from different things. Her bumper sticker reads “Humanity Is Trying.” It’s a triple entendre, she explains: Humanity is exhausting. Humanity is struggle. Humanity is doing the best it knows how.

Humanity Is Trying is several books in one. It’s a memoir about the love and the loss of a sister and ...