In November of 2007, Bard College Professor Joseph Luzzi’s wife, Katherine, who was 8 1/2 months pregnant, was in a fatal car accident. Their daughter, Isabel, was born by C-section, just 45 minutes before her mother died on the operating table.
Suddenly a widower and a single father to an infant, Luzzi saw life turned upside down by this new unexpected reality, one of intense grief and loneliness.
Luzzi, who teaches Italian literature, took refuge in the words of Dante and has written about that time in his memoir, In A Dark Wood. The title is borrowed from the opening lines of Dante's Divine Comedy.
Luzzi will be at The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, NY this Sunday afternoon at 3PM.