Swing Low: A Life - Softcover

Toews, Miriam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062070169 ISBN 13: 9780062070166

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2011

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.

About this title

Review:

"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

"...Toews offers a touching memoir."--Publishers Weekly

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0062070169
• ISBN 13: 9780062070166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240