"Your brother called. Your father is dying," the school secretary told her. It was shocking news, especially since her father, whose illness has appeared suddenly enough, had just been pronounced as "out of the woods." So recalls Tanya Chernov in her memoir, A Real Emotional Girl. A nominee for the Pushcart Poetry prize and poetry for the Los Angeles Review, Chernov is a Milwaukee native who spent many summers up north, where her parents operated the resort camp where her story begins. A Real Emotional Girl is a sustained meditation on loss and mourning, the need for establishing routine and finding bearings, the therapy of cleaning and the importance of sharing grief and sustaining positive family life.