MEMORIAL DAYS

A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey to peace from the bestselling Pulitzer Prize winning author of Horse 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 Martha s 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 Lambert s 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 p