“I will kill myself soon. But until then how do l tame my pain?” ― Sonali Deraniyagala, Wave. 

The plot follows a mother's struggle in dealing with the ripples that the tsunami cast on her life. The memoir begins with the tsunami and that itself was heartbreaking, but as the story continues, we see the author's mental health deteriorate and what she went through as she learned to cope with the loss of her loved ones. This is a story about how her life gets rebuilt when everything that made it a life--the people, the relationships, the activities - are gone. Deraniyagala has to piece herself back together, and she does so, slowly, painfully, and not always gracefully. I loved her honesty when she wondered why others were alive when she had lost so much; her concern that she was experiencing a hierarchy of grief by mourning her children and husband more than her parents.