Acclaimed novelist and poet Laila Halaby’s memoir, The Weight of Ghosts, documents her struggle to bear up after the devastating loss after her first-born son, Raad, 21, was killed on the side of a highway by a truck in the early morning hours one rainy February day. But this memoir grapples with much more than the enormity of her grief as Halaby intertwines other personal narratives: her heritage as a mixed-race person born out of wedlock; her relationship with a partner she refers to as TWMIL (The White Man I Loved); and her second, younger son’s struggle with drug addiction.