Even Darkness Sings: From Auschwitz to Hiroshima: Finding Hope and Optimism in the Saddest Places on Earth

With his wife and daughter, Cook travels across the globe in search of darkness--from Lourdes to Ghana, from San Francisco to Verdun, from the monumental, mechanised horror of Auschwitz to the intimate personal grief of a shrine to dead infants in Kamukura, Japan. Along the way he reflects on what these sites may teach us, not only about human history, but about our own personal histories.

During the course of a lifetime of traveling to some of earth''s most tragic locals, from the leper colony on Molokai to ground zero at Hiroshima, he finds not only darkness, but a light that can illuminate the darkness within each of us. Written in vivid prose, this is at once a personal memoir of exploration (both external and internal) and a strangely heartening look at the radiance and optimism that may be found at the very heart of darkness.

Thomas H. Cook has been nominated for the Edgar Award seven times in five different categories. He has received the Edgar Award, the Martin Beck Award, the Herodotus Prize for best historical short story, and the Barry Award and has been nominated for numerous other prizes. He divides his time between Cape Cod and Manhattan.