National Writers Series Presents - Geraldine Brooks

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse comes a heartrending and beautiful memoir about the sudden loss of her husband and her journey towards peace. XXXDoors open at 6 p.m. with a cash bar and live music. The event begins at 7 p.m. and includes a Q&A and author signing. Each ticket comes with a hardcover copy of Memorial Days.

In their early years together, Geraldine Brooks and Tony Horwitz were foreign correspondents reporting in conflict zones. They eventually 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 sunset with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. Tony – just 60 years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.

Geraldine was immediately forced to contend with red-tape demands and endless to-do lists. Unlike many cultural and religious traditions that expect those who are grieving to step away from the world, she–like many of us–was given no space to grieve. Her 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.