"Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happend and restore some of the missing parts---hopefully, even the arch to the sky."

For the past year and a half, this is the exercise I have tried to devote myself to. When it comes to the catastrophe of my marriage, I try to avoid sentimentality or fantasy, because they kept me from onfronting the crisis that was my marriage. I imagined a different person than my husband was, how people would reject me for leaving him if it came to that, how I was a terrible person for not being the embodiment of strength to tolerate the abandonment I experienced in our relationship. I re-trace so often the catastrophe of our marriage, and ask myself, like this book, how I could have stopped the train of disaster that was bearing down upon me? How could I have saved the life of our marriage? This book seeks an answer to the tragedy of 13 lives lost in the Mann Gulch Fire. I seek the answer to the tragedy of a broken commitment.