Playing with Dynamite

by Sharon Harrigan

Sharon Harrigan’s father was larger than life, a brilliant but troubled man who blew off his hand with dynamite before she was born and died in a mysterious and bizarre accident when she was seven. The story of his death never made sense. How did he really die? And why was she so sure that asking would be dangerous? A series of events compel her to find the answers, collecting other people’s memories and uncovering her own. Her two-year odyssey takes her from Virginia to Detroit to Paris and finally to the wilds of northern Michigan where her father died. There, she discovers the real danger and has to confront her fear.



Playing with Dynamite is about the family secrets that can distance us from each other and the honesty that can bring us closer. It’s about a daughter who goes looking for her father but finds her mother instead. It’s about memory and truth, grieving and growing, and what it means to go home again.

248 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2021

About the author

Sharon Harrigan is the author of the novel Half (2020) and the memoir Playing with Dynamite (2017). She has published widely in places such as the New York Times (Modern Love) and the Virginia Quarterly Review. She teaches creative writing at WriterHouse, a literary center in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she lives with her family.