Spirography is a coming-of-age memoir about the bond between a father and daughter, their intertwined illnesses, and the enduring love that persists even after death. This memoir follows author Cara Stoddard's intersecting experiences of cancer, grief, and sexuality, rooted in the suburban Midwest of the late twentieth century―where idyllic lake life, water sports, NASCAR, Christian rock, and a willful ignorance around queerness define the landscape. Set in the author's childhood home on a lake in Michigan, this lyrical archive of a family navigating crisis is an elegy not only for the memory of her father but also the end of her childhood spent outdoors. Stoddard takes the reader intimately through the checkpoints of her coming-of-age story―including working at a summer camp, moving to Colorado, falling in love, coming out―each leg of the journey backdropped by her father's declining health and the author's own incremental acceptance of this impending loss. Writing from ten years after her father's death, she traces her experiences of becoming a stepparent, carrying on her dad's legacy, and, in unimaginable ways, bringing him back to life. " Spirography is the rare, wonderful book: as alive with its own weathers as the lake around which Stoddard's childhood life revolves. An elegy to a father lost to cancer; a childhood-cancer-survival memoir that refuses any easy definition of survival; a story of gender and sexuality, of water skiing and downhill skiing, of Michigan and the West, and what it means to be family, this is a radiant, restless search for answers and overlaps, all traced with such grace and intellectual and emotional power. I couldn't put it down."―Alexandra Teague, author of Spinning Tea Cups: A Mythical American Memoir " Spirography is a moving love story, richly layered: a daughter's love for their father spirals outward to include family, friends, lovers, a daughter of their own, and love for place, too―from one small lake in Michigan to the Great Lakes generally to mountains in Colorado and Washington. Cara Stoddard is a generous narrator, ever in motion―skiing, skating, hiking, swimming, boating―with a curious mind, ever searching, questioning. Their voice brims with wisdom and grace and warmth most of all, welcoming the reader at every turn."―Ana Maria Spagna, author of Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going and Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey "Stoddard's stunning debut memoir, Spirography , strands together their and their father's cancers, his death, and their attempts to rebuild their world. It is written the way herons peer into dark lakes: unflinchingly gazing 'beneath the surface all the way down to the bottom.'"―Sean Prentiss, author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave "This elegant memoir explores the loss of a father and the rearing of a daughter through the shifting lenses of place and memory."―Mary Clearman Blew, author of Think of Horses "In Cara Stoddard's debut memoir Spirography: A Memoir of Family, Loss, and Finding Home, they employ and complicate the metaphor of the spirograph. Stoddard uses it as a symbol to trace the legacy of Stoddard's father and their respective cancers. But they also probe how other lines in the spirograph of Stoddard's life intersect: sometimes running with breathtaking proximity, other times simply striding parallel"―Courtney Ann LaFaive, Center for Literary Publishing "Spirography is an introspective memoir that recasts grief in terms of acceptance."― A story of kinship, queerness, and the secrets of the body in the wake of illness and loss. Spirography is a coming-of-age memoir about the bond between a father and daughter, their intertwined illnesses, and the enduring love that persists even after death. This memoir follows author Cara Stoddard's intersecting experiences of cancer, grief, and sexuality, rooted in the suburban Midwest ern milieu of the late twentieth century--where idyllic lake life, water sports, NASCAR, Christian rock, and a willful ignorance around queerness define the landscape. Ten years after her father's death, Stoddard traces her experiences of becoming a stepparent, reenacting her dad's parenting, carrying on his legacy, and, in unimaginable ways, bringing him back to life. Cara Stoddard is a creative nonfiction writer and poet who grew up on a lake in Michigan. Their poems and essays have appeared in Fourth Genre , The Gettysburg Review , Terrain.org , and Ninth Letter . Currently, they live in Seattle with their stepdaughter.