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Jill Bialosky, a New York-based editor, attempts to create a "psychological autopsy" for her beloved younger half-sister Kim, and find out why she killed herself, in her mother's car, her mother asleep upstairs, in the early hours of April 1990. Or, why, why, why? – the cri de couer of those left behind. In her suicide note Kim wrote, "I love you all! Very much! I just have to go away. I'm tired of being lonely." Loneliness began when her Dad left (she was three), was compounded by her Mum's retreat (into severe depression), the departure of her three big sisters to jobs and college, dropping out of school (her dad re-appeared to announce she would never amount to anything), an abortion, and a troubled boyfriend, who also killed himself five years later. Kim's question to herself was presumably not "why?", but "why not?" Yes, people, read, and weep.
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