The rules of inheritance : a memoir
(Book)

Claire Bidwell Smith was just fourteen years old when both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other. As her mother begins to succumb during Claire's first year of college, Claire hurtles towards loss. She throws herself into the arms of anything she thinks might hold her up: boys, alcohol, traveling, and the anonymity of big cities. In New York, she studies writing and learns the ways of the world, falling in and out of love with a troubled young man, all the while grappling not only with her own loneliness and regret but that of her aging father. She joins him in Los Angeles as a novice journalist, and records one last thrilling entry in their nuclear family history in the fields of Eastern Europe in search of his World War II past. When it is time to say goodbye, once more the fragility of life astonishes.