Should I Still Wish by John W Evans follows on his previous memoir, Young Widower, in which recounts the story of losing his wife, who was thirty, to a bear attack. He was twenty-nine at the time. I haven’t read that earlier memoir. In this book, Evans writes about falling in love again as a widower, and the complicated mix of grief, guilt and love that accompanies it. There’s a happy ending and Evans looks back on his the violent ending of his first marriage, his subsequent remarriage and the births of his children with a wisdom and serenity that gives hope. Ultimately though, I needed to know a bit more of the backstory, so to speak, and was interested to know how he coped with his grief, and as I hadn’t read the first memoir, this was a story I didn’t have access to, which was frustrating. Read the first volume, then move onto this poetic, moving book.

"Should I Still Wish' by John W. Evans

In “Should I Still Wish” John Evans invites readers on a journey out of grief and into a new life and new love. This memoir reads like a sequel to the author’s earlier book “Young Widower” which chronicles the author’s descent into grief after the death of his first wife. My read of “Should I Still Wish” is influenced by Evans’ earlier memoir, wherein newlyweds John and Katie volunteered for the Peace Corps, lived overseas, and went hiking one afternoon while on holiday. Spoiler alert: Katie was—in a random and terrible twist of fate—mauled to death by a wild bear.

It takes courage to write about those we are closest to—whether they have died or are still living—and the author does a fine job sharing the inner workings of heart and mind. He wanders emotionally and literally across territory connected with “before” then ventures westward, into new landscapes with a new love interest. This memoir offers readers a journey, an exploration of how to take risks, how the self re-engages with the world after a great loss.

After the author’s return to Indiana (where he sought shelter at his brother-in-law’s house for more than a year) an invitation from an old friend, Cait, to meet John for a road trip offers the first glimmers of “maybe”. Evans wonders, “Wasn’t it all too soon? Cait didn’t want to be my consolation prize, and certainly not my rebound. She liked me too much for that.”

Echoes of grief and memory thrum continuously through the author’s present-day moments. While waiting for Cait to arrive at the Billings airport, he thinks: “I want to love the West and to find there some variation on what everyone agrees is happiness, a variation on me. I will never again be that man who watched Katie die and was unable to stop it. I will always be that man…”

One of the strengths of this memoir is the weaving of interiority with landscape, details of place. “…the highway out of Montana takes Cait and me across Beartooth Pass, up and down Beartooth Highway. There are bear totems in the shops of the cities on either side of the pass and a museum with mounted brown bears, arms splayed and teeth bared.”

Much of John and Cait’s love story unfolds in spaces not given scene in this memoir. The book skips past nuances of their choice to marry, to start a family. Braided into the story of new love are flashbacks of memory of “before”, of life with Katie, places that meant something to her, and to them.

The author’s journalistic tone lends honest authority to revelation of images and places that become tipping points. This memoir is a careful and inspired exploration of ways that life and love might take root even during times of devastating despair.