When the muckraking journalist Barbara Ehrenreich died in 2022, her author son, Ben, decided to write a story every day to work through his emotions. The 85 pieces collected here all roughly qualify as flash fiction, though a few are ultrabrief wisps of ideas. (Complete text of one piece: “Again, it was supposed to rain, but it did not rain, again.”) Some pieces are intimately engaged with moments from Ehrenreich’s life with his wife and young daughter; others endeavor to evoke the language of myth and fable in narratives populated by magpies, crows, tigers, and wolves. But regardless of the register he writes in or the length of the piece, Ehrenreich is wrestling with the idea of story itself—what it takes to put a life in order, what’s sacrificed when you do so, and whether it’s possible or fair to try. (“I am tired. Is that a story?” he asks.) The brevity and fluidity of themes in these pieces recall Lydia Davis’ spiky short fiction, though Ehrenreich keeps the mood somber and questioning. Three of the pieces were inspired by the deaths of others besides his mother, and his prevailing response is one of mournful uncertainty. “It is through stories that I know how to connect to the world, so I wrote stories,” he writes in the introduction, and he seems skeptical about how much stories can help. But the effort itself, and his refusal to seek pat, tidy resolutions, are what make the book poignant and satisfying; he’s deliberately evoking the anguish and frustration of anyone who’s struggled to articulate the loss of a loved one. It’s a curious kind of balm, but a balm nonetheless.