"An Unfortunate Woman assumes the form of a traveler's journal, chronicling the protagonist's journey and his oblique ruminations on the suicide of one woman and the death from cancer of another, a close friend.".

"After Richard Brautigan committed suicide, his only child, Ianthe Brautigan, found among his possessions the manuscript of An Unfortunate Woman. It had been completed more than a year earlier but was still unpublished at the time of his death. Finding it too painful to face his presence on page after page, she put the manuscript aside.".

"Years later, having completed a memoir about her father's life and death, Ianthe Brautigan reread An Unfortunate Woman and now, clear-eyed, she saw that it was Richard Brautigan's work at its best, and that it had to be published."--BOOK JACKET.