When Anne Edelstein was 42, her mother, an experienced swimmer in good health, drowned while snorkeling in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Caring for two small children of her own, Anne suddenly found herself grieving not only for her emotionally distant mother but also for her beloved younger brother Danny, who had violently killed himself more than a decade before. To find peace in the future, she must wrestle not only with the past and her family’s long history of mental illness, but also with the present and the growing emotional needs of her children.
Part memoir and part meditation on joy, grief, and the other extreme emotions that make families so impossible and so indispensable, Lifesaving for Beginners will resonate with anyone who has ever struggled to come to terms with their siblings, their parents, their children, and their place in the larger familial constellation.
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