Zora del Buono was eight months old when her father died in a car accident in 1963. Her dead father was a great void at the heart of the family. She and her mother hardly ever spoke about him. When her mother did mention him, Zora broke off the conversation, her heart pounding. She couldn’t bear her mother’s pain.
Now, at 60, she wonders: what happened to E.T., the then 22-year-old man who caused the accident? How has he lived with the guilt for the past 60 years?
Because of Him is the story of a search: the narrator goes looking for E.T., wanting to confront him with her family’s story. Her search takes her to dark, mysterious places where she finds answers that throw up new questions. What will it do to her, knowing more about the man who killed her father than about her father himself? And how can a person heal when there will always be a void in their life?