Inheritance

"e;Powerful ... full of dark nostalgia."e;Nathan EnglanderThe LifeboatAll night in his lifeboat my father sangto keep the voices of the other menwho cried in the wreckage from reaching him,he sang what he knew of the requiem,of the hit parade and the bits of hymns,he sang until he would never sing again,scalding his raw throat with sea-wateruntil his ribs heaved, until the saltwept from his eyes on dry land,flecked at his lips in his squalling rages,streaked the sheets in his night sweatsas night after night the reassembled shipscattered its parts on the shore of his bed,and the lifeboat eased him out againto drown each night among singing men.Inspired by a shipwreck endured by her father during the Second World War, and by his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventual suicide, Inheritance is a powerful poetic debut by the winner of the 2013 Boston Review Fiction Contest and The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award.