Haze (short for Hazel) has written a newspaper column for over 50 years, when she has a major stroke. As she lies in a coma in her hospital bed, Susan McGrath, the newspaper's publisher, decides to re-run Haze's old columns while Haze is out, and brings in her own teenage son Sam to choose which columns to run as part of his summer job. Sam has been out of sorts with his parents' separation, and has other issues to contend with, but he soon gets drawn into reading Haze's columns. As others read the columns (and sometimes the letters to the editor that came in response to those early columns), they get drawn in as well. Haze had a chatty, empathetic way of looking at the world and its events, on both a large scale and a micro scale. She had her detractors as well. Old neighbors, co-workers, her nurse, classes of high school students, friends, and friends of friends all seem to find something to talk about in these old musings of Haze. And in some special ways, many of these people are changed.
That's the Lorna Landvik I have always appreciated. I thought it was a great story.
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