Composition of Life : A Memoir of Science and Spirituality

Composition of Life is more than a memoir: it is a spiritual journey of forgiveness, compassion, and reconciliation that transcends time and place. Science and serendipity resonate with one another, twin strands of evidence weaving stories of sorrow and loss with moments of consolation and abiding love. Butterflies emerge from cocoons in an Eden-like garden, evoking memories of a mother who succumbed to pancreatic cancer as fires rage through Northern California. The #MeToo movement, rampant racism under a populist regime, and climate change connect across eons with childhood recollections both sweet and sorrowful. A periodic table of life, elements range from the periodic table to the physical elements of alchemy and the tree of life. Both the mother-son bond and the father-son wound are revealed in ways that science cannot explain and that cross borders, figurative and literal.