Preview of What Was Mine Summary:

As the title implies, many of the stories in What Was Mine are concerned with characters' recovering and understanding their own past. Many characters face loss and a sense of failure, but others are able to come to terms with and even build on their past lives. The protagonist of "Imagine a Day at the End of Your Life," who had worked as a milkman until his wife's career took off, reminisces about his marriage of over forty years to a busy detective story writer who has also produced five children. Portrayed as a sort of still and unifying force in a whirlwind of creation and procreation, a counterpoint to his wife, the narrator's imaginative efforts to bring together his life, both by his scrapbook of leaves and his imagined day, are deeply felt expressions of a predominantly good and loving family man. In the far sadder title...