“A beautiful, shattering. wise and honest and exquisitely written. Insight for anyone who has known the gnawing sorrow or the endless accusation of a senseless loss. It will also make you laugh out loud. Go figure.”
“I couldn’t put it down. Beautiful (and so funny) exploration of death - it makes you think about life. In the best of ways. Remarkable.”
““In clear, crisp prose, Gillmor has written a book that is searingly honest and heartbreakingly sad. From the story of his brother’s life and death to a larger exploration of white, middle-aged masculinity, Gillmor impresses us with his quiet insights.””
““To The River is haunting, beautifully written and rightly hesitant about any certainties regarding an act as ultimately unknowable in social terms as it is in individual decisions.””
““It is a keen-edged, frank book, beautiful and unflinching, painful and important.””
The Governor General's Literary award-winning exploration of suicide in which one of Canada's most gifted writers attempts to understand why his brother took his own life. Which leads him to another powerful question: Why are boomers killing themselves at a far greater rate than the Silent Generation before them or the generations that have followed?
In the spring of 2006, Don Gillmor travelled to Whitehorse to reconstruct the last days of his brother, David, a talented musician whose truck and cowboy hat had been found at the edge of the Yukon River. David's family, his wife and his friends had different theories about his disappearance. Some thought he had run away; some thought he'd met with foul play; but most believed that David, who at forty-eight was about to give up the night life for a day job, had intentionally walked into the water. Just as Don was about to paddle the river looking for traces, David's body was recovered. And Don's canoe trip turned into an act of remembrance and mourning.
Though David could now be laid to rest, there was no rest for his survivors. In this tender, probing, surprising work, Don Gillmor helps those left behind understand why people kill themselves and how to live with the aftermath. And he asks why, for the first time, it's not the teenaged or the elderly who have the highest suicide rate, but the middle aged. Especially men.