Chris Erskine is the master of domestic dramedy.

For three decades in the Los Angeles Times, Erskine's columns explored modern fatherhood and family life, from the absurd to the mundane, the sublime to the heartbreaking. Now, with Lavender in Your Lemonade: A Funny and Touching COVID Diary, he tackles the New Normal with his chronicle of daily life under the frustrating, terrifying, and sometimes antic strictures of a world-wide pandemic.

No, it's not funny. And yet somehow, in Erskine's hands, it is.

Or at least it feels more tolerable.

With elegant prose and an eye for telling detail, Erskine draws simple truths from the infinite complexities of the human condition, eight hundred words at a time. In the great tradition of Erma Bombeck, Mike Royko, Dave Barry, and Bob Greene, Erskine shows us ourselves in a funhouse mirror.