When the world is collapsing, how is survival possible?

When a three-year-old stuffs paper into the toilet, it seeps through the ceiling onto the mahogany table to enrage his mother. Money tight, a girl does farm work in hot sun. A homeless man yearns for his childhood home. A young Merchant marine sails into the port city just A-bombed. Millions are stunned as planes slice into their tallest skyscraper.

In Jean E. Verthein's Bottled Cries at Sea, as events grow ever more gross and confounding, how do we cope?