Reading Joan Didion’s iconic memoir The Year of Magical Thinking, Jacob Bacharach’s thoughts are never far from his brother, Nate, who died of an opioid addiction. Although he tries to be a “a cool customer” like Didion, he finds Nate’s story breaking through the text, stirring memories of their tight-knit childhood and defying his attempts to find “the truth” about a tragic death. In A COOL CUSTOMER, Bacharach turns The Year of Magical Thinking into a blueprint for grief and self-discovery that anyone can follow. This book is part of a new series from Fiction Advocate called Afterwords.