An Accidental Memoir

On a rainy Tuesday morning in 1996, Wendy Reed’s car hydroplaned, crossed an interstate median, and crashed into an oncoming car, whose driver was killed. Though Reed and her son were unharmed and Reed initially described herself as "fine," in the months that followed she would be engulfed in a storm of guilt and recrimination, as well as jarring legal proceedings over the accident.

In An Accidental Memoir, Reed, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, points the lens at herself and explores that accident and a succession of personal experiences through fact and fiction. Told from unusual perspectives and in highly figurative language, the stories draw on the Southern Gothic tradition of Flannery O’Connor and feature dark humor, flawed people, disastrous events, and moments of spiritual grace.

Taken together, this collection of deliberately fragmented essays and short stories become a meditation on subjects such as work, family responsibilities, death, and raising a child.