Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir

Nelson Gross led an outsized life-one in which he played many roles: father, brother, husband, politician, entrepreneur. When he was killed by a couple of teenagers in a botched abduction and robbery, the murder shook his family in predictable and terrible ways. For his daughter, Dinah Lenney, the parent of her own young children, the loss sparked a self-reckoning that led to this book, which is both a meditation on grief and a coming of age story. By turns funny and sad, frustrating and fulfilling, her candid memoir conducts readers through marriage and divorce, blended and broken families-and, finally, the kinds of conflict that infect the best of us under the best of circumstances. In the end, Lenney leaves us with the sense that in spite of extraordinary events-as with most families-it is mutual forgiveness and love that lead us to empathy, acceptance, and the will to carry on.