Joan Didion has always been known for her famously refined literary voice, her sentences so polished and buffed that they almost seem to come from another literary era. But when tragedy struck Didion’s family, writing became a way to deal with her grief, and to work through her conflicting emotions. As she puts it, “This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.”