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 pristine rugged coast
she often went days without seeing another person. There she pondered the various ways in
which cultures grieve 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 souls that
exquisitely captures the joy agony and mystery of life.
