About this item
Highlights
- "Audacious, original and profoundly moving . . . .
- Author(s): Miriam Toews
- 240 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Educators
Description
About the Book
Audacious, original and profoundly moving . . . . Healing is a likely outcome of a bookimbued with the righteous anger, compassion and humanity of Swing Low. Globe and Mail (Canada)Reverberatingwith emotional power, authenticity, and insight, Swing Low isMiriam Toews' daring and deeply affecting memoir ofher father s struggle with manic depression in a small Mennonite community inrural Canada. Personal and touching, a stirring counterpart to her novel IrmaVoth and reminiscent of works by Susan Cheever, Gail Caldwell, Mary Karr, and Alexandra Styron, Swing Low is an elegiacode to a difficult life by an author drawing from the deepest well of insight, craft, and emotion."
Book Synopsis
"Audacious, original and profoundly moving . . . . Healing is a likely outcome of a book imbued with the righteous anger, compassion and humanity of Swing Low." --Globe and Mail (Canada)Reverberating with emotional power, authenticity, and insight, Swing Low is Miriam Toews's daring and deeply affecting memoir of her father's struggle with manic depression in a small Mennonite community in rural Canada. Personal and touching, a stirring counterpart to her novel IrmaVoth and reminiscent of works by Susan Cheever, Gail Caldwell, Mary Karr, and Alexandra Styron, Swing Low is an elegiac ode to a difficult life by an author drawing from the deepest well of insight, craft, and emotion.
From the Back Cover
One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat, walked out of town, and took his own life. A loving husband and father, a faithful member of the Mennonite church, and an immensely popular schoolteacher, Mel was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggling with bipolar disorder, he could no longer face the darkness that clouded his world. In this moving meditation on illness, family, faith, and love, Mel's daughter, critically acclaimed novelist and reporter Miriam Toews, recounts her father's life as he would have told it, in his own voice, right up to the day of his final walk.
Swing Low is a bold, gracefully written, and compassionate recounting of one man's heartbreaking battle with depression.
Review Quotes
"...Toews offers a touching memoir." -- Publishers Weekly
"The magic of Swing Low is that Toews makes a life that looked ordinary, even grindingly so, seem exalted." -- Maria Russo, New York Times Book Review
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