The Freedom Tower

A Canadian website called Northumberlandtoday.com says most Canadians felt the Americans’ pain when the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001, but a place in Canada called Port Hope soon took the tragedy truly to heart when it was learned that some of its own were directly affected.

Arron Dack, son of Selena Forsyth, of Port Hope, and son-in-law of Phillip Carter and Sheilagh Fletcher, of Port Hope, was killed when the twin towers fell.

The 39-year-old left behind a wife, Abigail Carter, 36, a daughter, Olivia, six, and a son, Carter, only two.

Now Ms. Carter has published a book called The Alchemy of Loss, (McClelland & Stewart) to describe the journey she and her children have undergone since that day.

Through the auspices of Furby House Books, Ms. Carter will appear at Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre this Friday, March 28, to read from her book, sign copies, meet the public and answer questions.

She says writing the book was a form of healing for her and, she hopes reading it will help others deal with loss.

But the special circumstances of 9/11 made her husband’s not an ordinary death.

Amid the shock and sorrow, Ms. Carter says, “Suddenly, I was weirdly famous.”

Still, she says, “loss is loss,” and she hopes her book, with a title that deliberately avoids mention of 9/11, and does refer to “grief,” will help someone else - some other widow or widower, someone in the throes of divorce, another single mom, perhaps - to cope with life after loss, and even meet some situations with humour.

In the book, Ms. Carter is scrupulously honest, not sparing herself or others when it comes to descriptions of reactions, of situations handled well, or not so well.

Unflinchingly, she recounts the last moments of her husband’s life, when he used his cell phone to call her at their New Jersey home to tell her he thought there was “a bomb” in the trade center, and ask her to call 911.