Successful lawyer and writer Keith McWalter ‘71 debuts his first novel, “When We Were All Still Alive.”

About the book:

The last great question of every long marriage “Who will die first?” has been answered for Conrad “Connie” Burrell.

For Conrad ―husband, father, and successful attorney in the autumn of his life―the world has come apart. Having long ago lost his first wife, the mother of his grown daughter and a widow herself, to youth and pride, he’s now lost his second to a violent accident. “You think you’re finished, that you have no more stories in you,” his ex-wife warns, and he fears she’s right. Within hailing distance of the end of his days, after a lifetime of meeting the expectations of others, none are left but Conrad’s own, and he must discover whether love survives death as well as divorce―whether family memory can redeem individual mortality.

About Keith McWalter:

McWalter writes the essay blog Mortal Coil, and his narrative nonfiction and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. A collection of his essays, No One Else Will Tell You: Letters from a Bi-Coastal Father, won the Writer’s Digest Award for Nonfiction, and his family memoir, Befriending Ending, was anthologized in the online literary magazine Feathered Flounder. McWalter grew up in Mexico and Pennsylvania, is a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School, and spent much of his first career in the legal and investment banking worlds of New York and San Francisco. He and his wife live in Granville, Ohio, and Sanibel, Florida.

April 16, 2021