Memorial Days: A Memoir

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A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey topeace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofHorse

Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Marthas Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at Lamberts Cove. But all of this came to an abrupt end when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.

Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the varied waysthose ofother cultures grieve, such as the people of Australia's First Nations, the Balinese, and the Iranian Shiites, and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death.

A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between soulsthat exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.

Author Bio

Geraldine Brooks is the author of six novels, including Horse, People of the Book, Year of Wonders, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning March. She has also written two acclaimed works of nonfiction, Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Her writing has been translated into over 25 languages andhas collectively sold millions of copies around the world. Born and raised in Australia, Brooks lives in Massachusetts.