Probably, it is Elizabeth Edwards' "Resilience" which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for weeks this spring.

Arguably, this success has been based in part on the public's fixation with the author's husband's affair. Understandable. But still regrettable since the basic strength of the book is Edwards' insights on how to make a positive personal response to the negative situations life can present. Her husband's infidelity is only one of several terrible events that robbed her of the ideal life she thought she had.

How does she, and how can we, bounce back from the worst tragedies? From the loss of a beloved child? From a vigorous cancer that will end a life prematurely? Or from any other awful tragedy?

Edwards discusses her personal set of tragedies with an "Old Testament" eloquence that parallels the laments of the psalmist, who wrote in Psalm 13, "How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?"

Like the psalmist, she looks for understanding and for help from a God whose purposes she can no longer fathom.

She discusses three great blows: loss of a beloved son, cancer that will cut her life short, and the affair that rocked her marriage to a husband she adores.

But anyone who reads the book for new information about the affair will be disappointed. It is the loss of her 16-year-old son, Wade, in 1996 that still drives her search and struggle for resilience.

Wade was an exceptional young man and his death in an automobile accident was a bolt from the blue that drove into Edwards' heart, where it remains. The loss of a child is a permanent loss for any parent. My sister and her husband reminded us that such sadness never goes away when, last Christmas, they commissioned a new carol to be sung at the National Cathedral in Washington in memory of their infant daughter who died 40 years ago.

Edwards returns again and again to Wade's death, to a burst of wind that "crossed the tobacco fields of eastern North Carolina and pushed the car of which he was so proud from the road ... so it flipped. And flipped, and flipped, until all of the life of the boy was pressed from him. And from me."

Edwards writes about the importance of facing up to life as it is, rather than as we might have wished it would be. Then, she writes, each of us must adapt and make the best our life as unfair and painful as it might be.

Perhaps her book will be more comforting for those who struggle with tragedy because her effort to be resilient appears to be very much a work in progress.

Her best example of resilience comes not from her own experience but from her late father's response to a stroke that initially completely disabled him.

Her father would not give up. He fought to communicate, to speak, to walk, to drive, and ultimately even dance, still inspiring his daughter even now after his death.

"This was Dad," Edwards writes, "and if he could decide to live, so could I."

His example and her powerful book can inspire and comfort us, too.