Death on the Beach

I read The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty when I was traveling. It's the story of a woman who returns to Mississippi for her father's final illness. Through the funeral and its aftermath, she tries to make sense of her father's choice of an unpleasant, inappropriate woman as his second wife, his reaction to the death of her own mother, and the previous loss of her husband. The book is wonderful, but I read a lot of it, including the funeral scene, on the beach in Playa del Carmen. The disconnect between what I was reading and where I was sitting may have blunted some of the force of the book, but I still thought it was very moving and true. Yay!